Eavesdrop On Experts

Lupus isn’t well known, but the currently incurable autoimmune disease often marked by a ‘butterfly’ rash on the face, is highly prevalent, affecting five million people globally. Treatments are few and far between and few researchers are focused on it. But award winning medical researcher Professor Fabienne Mackay has concentrated much of her career on tackling lupus, and in 2011 her genetic research work led to the approval of the first new treatment for the disease in more than 50 years. And while that is good news for some patients, the treatment isn’t effective for all patients, and she says more research work and breakthroughs are needed. “I would love the public to realise that lupus is actually very prevalent; that the therapies we have at the moment, even though I worked towards one, are not serving everybody. It helps some patients but not all of them,” says Professor Mackay who in October 2019 received a Distinguished Innovator Award from the US-based Lupus Research Alliance. The good news is th