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Meeting report
Report of the inaugural Interferon Research Summit: interferon in inflammatory diseases
  1. Mary K Crow1 and
  2. Lars Rönnblom2
  1. 1 Department of Medicine, Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research, Hospital for Special Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA
  2. 2 Department of Medical Sciences, Section of Rheumatology, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mary KCrow; crowm{at}hss.edu

Abstract

An international summit on interferon (IFN) in inflammatory diseases, held in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA (4–5 May 2017), united 22 internationally renowned clinicians and scientists with backgrounds in basic science, translational science and clinical medicine. The objectives of the summit were to assess the current knowledge of the role of type I IFN in inflammatory diseases and other conditions, discuss the available clinical trial data of anti-IFN therapeutic agents and identify key clinical and therapeutic knowledge gaps and future directions to advance the treatment landscape of diseases involving the type I IFN pathway. A discussion-based consensus process was used to assess three main clinical areas: the role of type I IFN in innate immunity, the role of type I IFN in autoimmune diseases and rational therapeutic targets in the IFN pathway. These are described here, along with current knowledge gaps and resulting recommendations. The advisors unanimously agreed that, despite significant obstacles, the field should transition from an organ-based model to a pathophysiology-based model. A better understanding of the molecular pathways could help inform potential therapeutic targets, thus progressing towards personalised medicine by tailoring the therapy to each patient.

  • Interferon
  • inflammatory diseases
  • systemic lupus erythematous

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/lupus-2018-000276

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors A list of meeting participants/advisors is provided in the appendix. MC and LR co-chaired the summit and contributed to manuscript preparation.

    • Funding This summit was fully sponsored by AstraZeneca, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.

    • Competing interests The two authors of this report, as well as the meeting participants, received fees for their time in preparing for and presenting at/attending this meeting. They received no fees for their work as authors of the manuscript.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.