What are some of the most promising areas of autoimmune disease research right now that patients like me should be aware of?

Oh, I'm so thrilled that you asked that question because I have so many good things to tell you.

So OADR is small and fairly new, but I'm really pleased that we've been able to do some amazing things and support some incredible projects since we started.

Back in 2023, one of the inaugural funding opportunities from OADR was a program called the EXACT PLAN Network, National Research Collaborative, focused on understanding how environmental exposures shape autoimmune disease risk, onset, and outcomes.

And the goals of this network were to build a system-level view of how different factors across our lifespan, like chemicals, infections, diet, other exposures, interact with our cells and tissues and organs and place us at risk of multiple autoimmune diseases.

There were a number of exploratory and developmental projects supported through this initiative, and they were really designed to help research institutions lay the groundwork for studying this over the longer term, building partnerships, strengthening infrastructure, and trying to develop the scientific capabilities needed to contribute to a kind of larger research mission in this area.

That network is still working together, helping to move beyond studying one autoimmune disease at a time and really integrating understanding of how different environmental factors at different points in our life might trigger and shape disease across the many different autoimmune diseases and across our lifespans.

Basically, what do we do with all this information? How are these changing the pace or the direction of the research that's being done right now?