Biomedical Research Foundation Academy Of AthensAcademy Of Athens
News :Dimitrios Boumpas Received Prestigious ERC Advanced Grant

Dimitrios Boumpas received the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant and has been awarded funding for his research project titled, “Precision Care in Systemic Autoimmunity: An Integrated Multi-Tissue/Level Approach for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)”.

Only 231 of Europe’s top researchers were honored with this distinguished award.  The funding of the awards reached the sum of €540 million and will give these researchers the opportunity to actualize their ideas and hence have a major impact on science, science and the economy.

 

Project Overview

The project seeks to capitalize on the expertise of the group on the clinical and molecular characterization of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) -the prototypic systemic human autoimmune disease-disease- by integrating data from multi-tissue analyses with novel technologies to improve its diagnosis, monitoring and therapy.  More specifically the group will seek to design gene expression panels and “expression profile”/“clinical trait” correlation matrices for diagnostics, personalized immunotherapy and improved clinical trial design. The project will also be pursuing the innovative hypothesis that the fundamental abnormalities of SLE lie within the bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells, and validate them as a therapeutic target.

Finally, by the use of multiomic,systems-medicine approaches, the investigators will  explore fundamental pathogenetic questions in systemic autoimmunity such as the  staggering female predominance of the disease (7–9 females :1 male) and the role of somatic mutations in enhancing immune hyperactivity.  The utility of the SLE research extends beyond its boundaries, by providing insights to how the immune system recognizes self-constituents and maintains its homeostasis, and how gender impacts on disease biology.