APS Support UK and LUPUS UK are jointly funding research into APS at University College London
Thanks to the efforts of our fundraising committee, the Louise Gergel Fellowship , and matching funding from LUPUS UK the charity has been able to support a year-long APS research project at University College London (UCL) carried out by Dr Vera Ripoll-Nunez. Dr Ripoll-Nunez started her career in Colombia working at the Institute of Immunology, focussing on malaria which is the leading cause of death in Colombia. During this time, she developed a passion to forge a career in immunology and worked in Australia and the UK. She has been working at UCL since 2011, and played a key role in the 2010-2016 research programme funded by Arthritis Research UK that looked into the causes of APS. Her new project builds on this earlier research and will look at a new biological target in the treatment of APS: an important process called autophagy in which the body’s cells renew themselves. Dr Ripoll-Nunez is aiming to prove that a malfunction in autophagy leads the immune sy