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The grant will support Dr Odobasic's research to find safer therapies for autoimmune vasculitis, a serious disease which causes severe inflammation of small blood vessels, mainly in the kidney.
Dr Odobasic said, "As for many autoimmune diseases, current treatments are toxic, non-specific and broadly immunosuppressive. This causes many serious side effects such as infections and cancers from which many patients die. Our aim is to find alternative, safer therapies. Such therapies would ideally suppress only the disease-causing autoimmunity, while preserving the patient's ability to fight pathogens and tumours.
In this project, we will show that specialised immune cells called tolerogenic dendritic cells, will be able to specifically turn off only the autoimmune responses which cause vasculitis, without adversely affecting the rest of the immune system. We will show this using both animal models and patients' cells.
Our studies will provide the initial stepping stones for the progress of this cell therapy into clinical trials. This treatment has the potential to provide immense benefit to vasculitis patients by reducing complications and death due to off-target effects, and therefore significantly improve their quality of life. "
Speaking of the award, Dr Odobasic said, "I am very grateful to the Vasculitis Foundation for this grant. These funds will make an important contribution to finding a safer therapy for patients with autoimmune vasculitis".
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