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| L-R: Yeong Song (South Korea); CC Mok (Hong Kong); Yoshiya Tanaka (Japan); Sang-Cheol Bae (South Korea); Eric Morand in Washington, D.C. last month |
Head of School of Clinical Sciences at Monash
Health (SCS) Professor Eric Morand was an invited speaker at the American
College of Rheumatology (ACR) Annual Meeting last month in Washington, D.C.
Attended by over 10,000 delegates, Professor Morand presented on the Asia Pacific Lupus Collaboration (APLC)
at the Meeting.
The APLC was formed in 2012, and is a
collaboration of expert lupus investigators from 16 research centres across Australia, China, UAE, Dubai, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
“The APLC is performing the largest
prospective cohort study of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) ever
undertaken,” said Professor Morand, who is also Head of Rheumatology at Monash
Health.
“SLE is more common and more severe in Asia
but prior to the APLC no one had worked to link the many local registries and
clinics.”
“Undertaking SLE research in Asia can expedite
our research because of patient numbers and the severity of cases,” said
Professor Morand.
Professor Morand said the main study being explored by the
APLC is based on validating a definition of a Lupus Low Disease Activity State
(LLDAS) which had been lacking in this field.
Professor Morand and his colleagues have
developed an instrument for measuring treatment response.
“The APLC had multiple posters on their work
at the ACR Annual Meeting, and found that several other large cohorts have
tested and validated the measure,” said Professor Morand.
“The measure was tested in a major
pharmaceutical company database from a clinical trial and found to have
excellent discrimination of active treatment against placebos, something the
field of SLE has awaited for many years.”
As a result of Professor Morand’s
presentation last month in Washington DC, further new sites and countries have
requested to join the APLC.
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