Alumni featured in WaPo News "What causes lupus?"

A Washington Post article features two MD-PhD Program alumni-Deepak Rao, MD'10 PhD'09 and Jaehuk Choi, MD'06 PhD'06-who collaborated on groundbreaking research published last week in Nature on the underlying mechanisms of lupus and the promising potential for novel therapies to treat the autoimmune disease. Their "results suggest that augmenting AHR activation therapeutically may prevent CXCL13⁺ T_PH/T_FH differentiation and the subsequent recruitment of B cells and formation of lymphoid aggregates in inflamed tissues. Boosting T_H22 cell generation may also have benefits in mucosal barrier integrity in Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) although potential inflammatory consequences are possible. Collectively, these data support the therapeutic potential of AHR agonism for autoimmune diseases, either systemically or directed towards T cells."