Lupus Interval Monitoring to Manage Disease Flare and Enable Treatment Optimization

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disorder of poorly understood etiology associated with a wide range of symptoms and physical findings.

Many patients have incompletely controlled disease progressing to end-stage organ involvement. Recognizing and predicting flares and under associated organ damage would facilitate better treatment timing and selection. Recent improvements in care have dramatically enhanced the survival of lupus patients but increased mortality remains a major concern and current treatments for lupus remain inadequate. Development of novel therapies to manage lupus has been hampered by several challenges, including poorly understood pathogenesis, the heterogeneity of disease activity across and within patient populations, and difficulties conducting interventional studies. There remains a need for reliable and timely monitoring of disease activity and degree of organ damage to adequately evaluate response to treatments and long-term outcome. It is also important to differentiate genuine lupus activity and flares from another intercurrent disease such as infection.

To fill this gap, panels of reliable biomarkers that can classify patients with lupus into more homogenous subsets that are linked to disease activity are needed. Such a panel can be developed from signatures found in lupus patients' transcriptome sequencing data. DxTerity's proprietary DxCollect® Microcollector Device (MCD) is intended to facilitate the collection, stabilization, and shipping of a microsample (about 150μL) of blood. This microsample provides sufficient amounts of quality RNA to perform transcriptome sequencing, allowing identification and validation of candidate biomarker signatures. A rapid blood test to monitor and predict disease activity and treatment response would be an innovative diagnostic product. It could bring significant clinical benefits by enabling the individualized lupus monitoring and treatment to better control the disease and slow organ damage. This may assist with unburdening healthcare costs, help identify flares before they happen, and dramatically improve the management of lupus.

The study will collect participant self-collected blood samples from a fingerstick collection kit that can be done from home and self-reported information from up to 2500 participants for analysis.