The Lupus Research Alliance (LRA) has announced Dr. Deepak Rao, an immunologist of Indian origin affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, as the recipient of the 2025 Lupus Insight Prize.
The prestigious annual award, which includes a $100,000 research grant, honors scientific breakthroughs that significantly advance the understanding and treatment of lupus.
Dr. Rao’s award-winning research, recently published in Nature, sheds new light on a key mechanism that underlies the immune dysfunction in lupus.
His team discovered a previously unknown imbalance in certain T cell subsets, driven by disruption in the AHR-JUN regulatory pathway, a critical mechanism responsible for maintaining immune homeostasis.
“Our study reveals that inflammatory signals in lupus, especially those triggered by interferons, interfere with the AHR-JUN signaling process,” Dr. Rao said. “This causes a reduction in protective Th22 cells and an increase in T peripheral helper (Tph) and T follicular helper (Tfh) cells, which contribute to excessive antibody production and chronic inflammation.”
The findings were made in collaboration with Dr. Jaehyuk Choi, a dermatologist and immunologist at UT Southwestern.
Together, the researchers uncovered how this cellular imbalance escalates immune overactivity, a hallmark of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic autoimmune disease that affects millions of people worldwide.
The LRA officially presented the award to Dr. Rao at the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) 2025 meeting in Boston.
The ceremony was chaired by Dr. Gary Koretzky, Co-Chair of the LRA’s Research Committee and a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine.
“Dr. Rao’s discoveries open new avenues for therapeutic development,” said Dr. Teodora Staeva, Chief Scientific Officer at the Lupus Research Alliance. “By identifying the disrupted AHR-JUN pathway, his work provides a clear target for restoring immune balance in lupus patients.”
The research not only improves our understanding of lupus pathogenesis but also offers promising leads for novel treatments.
Targeted therapies that modulate the AHR-JUN pathway or block interferon-driven inflammation could potentially rebalance the immune system and reduce disease severity.
The Lupus Insight Prize recognizes exceptional researchers whose findings hold high potential to transform lupus care.
Dr. Rao joins a distinguished list of past recipients whose work has catalyzed major advances in autoimmune disease research.
With support from the award, Dr. Rao plans to continue exploring immune regulation in lupus with the ultimate goal of developing therapies that suppress damaging immune responses while enhancing protective ones.
