A Catalyst for Collaboration
The Stanford Autoimmune & Allergy Supergroup (SAAS) connects researchers across departments and disciplines
SAAS Founder & Stanford ITI Director Mark Davis, PhD
May 14, 2024 - By Sarah Paris
Autoimmune and allergic diseases are complex, and they nearly always affect multiple organs and systems. To advance research and help patients, synthesizing a range of specialties is key. And because these diseases afflict millions of people, often severely, while being understudied and poorly understood, they present a tremendous opportunity to address a “wicked problem,” as the former DoM chair Bob Harrington would have put it. In other words, it is a challenge that requires a team science approach.
Harrington was one of the sponsors who helped launch the Stanford Autoimmune & Allergy Supergroup (SAAS) approximately two years ago. The group was the brainchild of Mark Davis, PhD, professor of microbiology & immunology and the director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation, and Infection (ITI). The goal was to establish an interdepartmental and interdisciplinary forum to better understand autoimmune diseases and launch studies that will improve treatment options.
“Autoimmune diseases are perfect for a team science approach, there are over 80 different diseases, and while many drugs that treat the symptoms have been developed, we lack a fundamental understanding of what exactly goes wrong and why these pathologies persist. We don’t need more specialization – we need to pool talent and knowledge across the whole spectrum of biomedicine, from clinicians to basic scientists, to understand the fundamentals of these diseases and find out how to cure them,” said Davis.
SAAS conference co-organizer Tobias Lanz, MD
With this goal in mind, Davis, along with Tobias Lanz, MD, assistant professor of immunology and rheumatology and the newest faculty member at the ITI, organized the second SAAS conference. The two-day event on March 4-5 brought together over 300 researchers from Stanford and from institutions across the country and abroad. The agenda featured several prominent external researchers, including:
Brian Kim, MD, Mount Sinai, one of the top researchers studying itching and inflammatory skin conditions;
Virginia Pascual, MD, Weill Cornell Medicine, a leader in the field of systemic lupus erythematosus research;
Michael Wilson, MD, UCSF, a renowned expert in the field of autoimmune inflammation of the brain;
and keynote speaker Georg Schett, MD, University of Erlangen, Germany, whose landmark trials using CAR T-cell therapy in 15 patients with severe autoimmune disease were highly effective and put cell therapies on the map for autoimmune patients.
By design, the conference showcased a wide diversity of topics so as to gather scientists from many different fields of medicine, including rheumatology, neurology, dermatology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and genetics. In addition, it welcomed researchers from adjacent scientific disciplines, such as structural biologist Ted Jardetsky, PhD, who characterizes Epstein-Barr virus on a molecular level. His work is highly relevant for developing vaccines and treatments for multiple sclerosis and lupus.
A specific goal of the supergroup is to serve as a forum for orphan and rare diseases that are understudied. One such disease is ME/CFS – Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a disabling and complex illness that has no known lab test, no manifest clinical hallmarks, and no characteristic findings on MRI imaging, which makes it particularly difficult to diagnose and study. Several talks at the conference focused on the latest research on ME/CFS, including exploring its shared characteristics to Long Covid.
Women have long been far more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases than men, accounting for about 80% of the more than 24 million Americans afflicted with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other debilitating disorders. The laboratory of Howard Chang, MD, PhD, professor of professor of dermatology and of genetics, seeks to understand the cause for this female predominance. At the conference, Diana Dou, PhD, a scientist in the Chang Lab, showed that proteins that attach to the second female X-chromosome contribute to inflammation.
Stanford researchers are developing new tools to study autoimmune diseases. Antonio Santos, PhD, a postdoc in the laboratory of Calvin Kuo, MD, PhD, demonstrated how he models the intestinal wall of patients with celiac disease in a culture dish. These culture systems, called “organoids,” mimic features of the patient’s organs and their disease, and they can be used to study autoimmune mechanisms and investigate new drugs without the need for animal testing.
The conference included breaks for networking and information exchange. “The SAAS conference was a wonderful opportunity to interact with physician scientists and basic scientists, all striving to understand autoimmunity from so many angles. I received many new insights from this conference and had ample opportunities to network and strike up new collaborations,” said Patricia Nguyen, MD, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine, whose research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.
While each disease has unique features, there are many commonalities, and the large problem of autoimmunity can only be tackled when researchers from all disciplines meet, learn from each other, and work together.
SAAS co-organizer Lanz heads a lab that studies how Epstein-Barr virus triggers autoimmunity: “The field of autoimmunity is dispersed into many areas of medicine,” he said. “The rheumatologists treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, the neurologists treat multiple sclerosis, patients with inflammatory bowel disease are seen by their gastroenterologist. While each disease has unique features, there are many commonalities, and the large problem of autoimmunity can only be tackled when researchers from all disciplines meet, learn from each other, and work together.”
In addition to the conference in March, the group organizes monthly seminars where faculty and postdocs present their latest research.
After its first conference in 2022, SAAS raised enough funding from the ITI and the Stanford Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, as well as from Dean Lloyd Minor, to support the projects of 11 research teams, each consisting of researchers from multiple disciplines. This seed funding resulted in several highly relevant publications and subsequent research grants from governmental funding agencies. The organizers hope to raise new funds for research projects to repeat this success next year.
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