February 2024 OADR Meeting: Key Updates on Autoimmune Disease Research
Meeting held virtually on February 23, 2024
This meeting of the Office of Autoimmune Disease Research (OADR) under the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) featured updates from Dr. Vicki Shanmugam. The meeting opened with an overview of OADR’s establishment, which was mandated by Public Law 117-328 and the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act. This law tasked OADR with coordinating a multi-institute research plan, identifying emerging research areas, fostering collaboration, evaluating the autoimmune disease research portfolio, and creating a central repository for autoimmune disease research.
OADR-ORWH has developed an initial research portfolio encompassing 144 autoimmune diseases categorized into 15 research areas, which are being evaluated as part of the NIH’s autoimmune research analysis. Meeting participants were enthusiastic about the concept of a centralized autoimmune disease research repository, with researchers proposing the following: a biofluid repository; a database with photographic representation of disease manifestation; and an integrated database with immune repertoire, genetic, clinical, and phenotypic data, and environmental and pathogen exposure data. Participants noted expected challenges, including the enormity of project scope, patient confidentiality, patient engagement, and data curation and management. Ensuring diversity and representation from all populations was also emphasized. The need for phenotyping technologies, guidelines for sharing phenotyping, and the development of prediction models was agreed on by several researchers.
In fiscal year 2023, OADR-ORWH supported a total of 41 awards across 12 separate NIH institutes and centers. This included 15 extramural co-funding awards, 3 R56 bridge funding awards, 2 Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Autoimmune and Immune-Mediated Diseases (AMP® AIM) awards, 10 intramural co-funding awards, 5 intramural scientific fellowships, and 6 EXACT-PLAN (EXposome in Autoimmune Disease Collaborating Teams PLANning) awards. The EXACT-PLAN Awards were developed by OADR-ORWH with the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and additional NIH institute, center, and office (ICO) partners to support the design, development, and implementation of a future, national, interdisciplinary, collaborative, team science research network that will advance the study of the exposome in autoimmune disease. These awards spanned basic to translational, clinical, and public health research focused on autoimmune diseases.
Additionally, OADR has an active Request for Information (RFI) seeking input for the NIH-wide Strategic Plan for Autoimmune Disease Research, with comments being accepted until March 1, 2024. Responses will guide OADR’s strategic planning process.
Other study topics raised by participants included investigation into commonly utilized non-medical approaches to disease management, inflammatory responses as a driver of neurodegenerative diseases, development of biomarkers, and better approaches to medication termination.