Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded La Jolla Institute for Immunology a $929,095 Project Grant under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) beginning June 2, 2026, with a completion date of May 31, 2031. This award funds research to advance understanding of lymphoid tissue immunology in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and the impact of therapeutic interventions. The research employs a novel minimally invasive nasal swab sampling methodology combined with high-dimensional immunologic analysis, including flow cytometry and transcriptomic profiling, to directly characterize immune cell populations in lymphoid tissues—a significant methodological advance over traditional blood-based approaches that have limited insights into tissue-specific immune mechanisms in SLE pathogenesis.

The primary deliverables include: (1) characterization of immune cell populations in lymphoid tissue from SLE patients versus healthy controls; (2) identification of immune features that correlate with disease activity over time; and (3) assessment of pre- and post-treatment immune dynamics in response to therapeutic interventions. By enabling repeated, longitudinal measurements of tissue-resident immune responses, this research aims to address critical knowledge gaps in understanding SLE-specific immune mechanisms and treatment response, with potential applications for developing targeted therapies for this complex autoimmune disease.