Why people respond differently to autoimmune disease treatments | Dr Eoin McKinney

Dr Eoin McKinney explains his research on using biomarkers to develop a better understanding of how and why people with autoimmune diseases respond differently to treatment, paving the way for better and more personalised therapy in the future.

The prognosis for autoimmune diseases lies on a spectrum. At one end, some people will have a chronic relapsing disease, with recurrent flares that remain unaffected by therapy. At the other end, some people will be healed with relatively little treatment.

Dr McKinney presents the work seeking to understand how to predict how people will respond to treatment for a range of multiple immune-related diseases, including vasculitis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. He explains how they found a correlation between the T cell transcriptome and autoimmune disease prognosis, and how they are now using informatics to try and trace out possible pathways behind this link.

Dr McKinney is a Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He was giving this presentation, "Making treatment personal: measuring T cell exhaustion to target treatment in autoimmunity, infection and vaccination", at the finals of the Young Investigator Competition 2014. The competition was part of the Academy of Medical Sciences Spring Meeting for Clinician Scientists in Training.

The Academy of Medical Sciences 2014 Spring Meeting was held on 26 February 2014 at the Royal College of Physicians. 250 attendees from across the UK came to London to meet and discuss their research.

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[inoiz]

its insane how infant this concept is.