Research
Overview
The primary goal for the Brown Lab research program is to generate a clinically validated evidence base for diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making that will improve immediate- and long-term outcomes for children that suffer from a rheumatic disease.
For all children with a rheumatic disease, ongoing management
and treatment of disease (inflammation) constitutes
the majority of patient visits to the rheumatologist.
The effectiveness of that treatment determines short
and long term quality of life and in turn, the associated
burden on the child, their family, the health care system and society. Standardized
and pediatric-validated definitions and clinical measures
of disease activity (which are critical for informing
treatment decisions) are currently lacking or imperfect.
Aim of Research Program
One of these key problems in pediatric rheumatology is the fact that the core pathophysiology of these diseases is not understood. Thus, available treatments are not targeted directly at the underlying biological issue; rheumatological drugs address the pain and inflammation indirectly, by treating downstream effector molecules. These treatments either cause general immune suppression (e.g. steroids), have limited or transient efficacy (e.g. small molecule anti-inflammatories) or are very expensive (e.g. biologics).
The aim of our research program is to find quantifiable markers of disease (i.e., inflammation) that will solve the underlying mechanisms and inform diagnosis and treatment for individual patients. To do this, we use a bedside-to-bench approach, with initial ‘discovery’ studies done on clinically well-defined patient samples to interrogate diseases from the patient level down to the subcellular level employing techniques ranging from functional genomics to cellular immunophenotyping, and ensuing mechanistic studies employing in vitro and in vivo systems to tease the markers of inflammation apart from the drivers.
