The difficulty in treating Lupus does not lie so much in the lack of an effective 1-drug-treats-all blockbuster, as with the current lack of accurate biomarkers to better target the available therapies to fit the underlying pathogenic process of individual patients at different phases of their disease.
Once such biomarkers become available and clinically accessible, it will be easier to begin formulating individualised Treat-to-Target strategies for Lupus.
Lupus Patients Genomically Stratified to Explain Treatment Responses
The frustration with failed trials and inadequate treatment response in Lupus is palpable, despite the proliferation of targeted therapies and the better understanding of the immunological basis of different clinical manifestations in the recent years.
The chasm lies in our (in)ability to translate the advancements from the bench to the bedside. This gulf needs to be bridged by better biomarkers, so that we can better target our targeted therapies.
Only when we can reliably match therapy to patient can we have a doable (and effective) treat-to-remission-target strategy for our Lupus patients.
I sign off this week’s focus on SLE with this hope; on World Lupus Day.