New York – March 27, 2023 – This information is from the Relapsing Polychondritis Foundation Inc. (RP Foundation) with Race for RP.
The Relapsing Polychondritis (RP) Foundation is pleased to announce it will continue and expand its partnership with NYU Grossman School of Medicine to invest in and advance the next phase of collaborative VEXAS research.
Funding from the foundation not only contributed to the discovery of VEXAS syndrome, which pinpointed mutations in the UBA1 gene as the cause of the previously unknown inflammatory disease, but also helped produce valuable research including a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showing VEXAS to be more common than initially anticipated, afflicting approximately one in 4,000 men and one in 26,000 women over age 50.
David B. Beck, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone Health and director of NYU Langone’s clinical Inflammatory Disease Genetics Program, will continue to lead his laboratory and clinical program team with the aim of providing genetic diagnoses for individuals with unexplained, severe inflammatory disease, better understanding the mechanism of VEXAS syndrome, and finding treatments to help patients with VEXAS syndrome and RP, as more than half of patients with VEXAS meet diagnostic criteria for RP.
“We are thrilled to grow our partnership with the Relapsing Polychondritis Foundation. Support from the RP Foundation has fueled our discoveries to date, and we are both committed to improving outcomes for people suffering from VEXAS and related autoimmune diseases. We are grateful for the foundation’s efforts to educate the public about these diseases and raise funds to help find the causes as well as effective treatments,” said Dr. Beck.
“Because of the strong association between VEXAS and RP, we hope to fuel additional discoveries in the genetic causes of disease which will inevitably lead to new and better means of diagnoses and novel therapies. We are optimistic Dr. Beck and his team will continue to have a considerable impact on rheumatology, hematology, and autoimmune research through their work and are proud to be partnering with them for another chapter of our mutual mission,” said David Bammert, President of the RP Foundation.
For more information about relapsing polychondritis, the RP Foundation, and the Race for RP, please visit https://rpf-new-staging.skybox2.com and http://raceforrp.org/. For all general and media inquiries, please contact David Bammert at (906) 869-3962 or dbammert@rpf-new-staging.skybox2.com.
About the Relapsing Polychondritis Foundation Inc. The Relapsing Polychondritis Foundation Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which strives to raise awareness and educate the public, as well as represent its patients to the global medical community and support medical research toward a cure. For more information about the RP Foundation, please visit the foundation’s website.
About Race for RP Race for RP is a non-profit organization that supports research, awareness programs, and care, for those affected by relapsing polychondritis and related diseases. RP is a painful, debilitating, and sometimes fatal autoimmune disease in which the immune system misfires, turning on the patient’s cartilage. For more information about Race for RP, please visit the organization’s website.
Media Contacts:
Company Name: Relapsing Polychondritis Foundation
Name: David Bammert
Phone: (906) 869-3962
Email Address: Send Email
Website: https://rpf-new-staging.skybox2.com
