The Rheumatology Research Foundation is proud to support young investigators and their innovative research into rheumatic diseases. Dr. Michael Brenner, a rheumatologist and immunology researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, emphasizes the importance of the Foundation’s focus on early-stage research—a crucial phase of discovery that few other funding sources support.
“In my career, there have been two or three instances where I had an idea that turned out to be correct. But at the early stage, we were just beginning to gather data to support it. The Rheumatology Research Foundation provided a small grant that allowed me to develop the idea to the point where I could then secure a larger grant from the National Institutes of Health,” Brenner explains.
He and his team’s Foundation-funded research is helping to find new treatments for rheumatic diseases by investigating inflammatory pathway activation—an alarm triggered when the body detects a threat, such as tissue damage, and works to protect itself.
“I believe our research is making a significant impact in understanding what goes wrong in these diseases, which will guide us more efficiently in identifying treatments to correct those abnormalities,” says Brenner.
He stresses that without early-stage support for new ideas, many would likely never come to fruition.
“The Foundation plays a special role by funding creative, inventive ideas, allowing them to overcome that difficult early period until they are more developed and can attract broader funding and support.”
Brenner also highlights the Foundation’s role in filling an important gap by funding research in areas like rheumatoid arthritisThe most common autoimmune type of arthritis. In RA, your body’s immune system begins to react against its own tissues, causing significant inflammation in your..., lupusLupus is a chronic (long-term) disease that can cause inflammation and pain in any part of your body. It’s an autoimmune disease, which means that..., and scleroderma—diseases that often receive less funding compared to other areas, such as cancer and heart diseaseHeart disease describes a range of conditions that affect the heart. Learn more..
He is grateful that the Foundation also supports training and career development opportunities, enabling researchers like him to dedicate their careers to rheumatic diseaseRheumatic disease is an umbrella term that refers to arthritis and several other conditions that affect the joints, tendons, muscle, ligaments, bones, and muscles (arthritis... research.
“The impact of the Foundation in nurturing, supporting, developing, and sustaining the workforce of investigators in this area is absolutely crucial,” Brenner concludes.