• Understanding common mechanisms of diseases and their relevance in co-morbidities thereby transforming the clinical outcome for patients with severe autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
• Providing the scientific underpinning by closing the knowledge gap in common mechanisms of disease for more individualized and thus safer and more effective management for severe autoimmune and inflammatory disease in both females and males affected by them.

The programme has four specific aims each corresponding to an individual Scientific Work Package designed to:

• Combine subset analysis of genome wide association studies with classical cell biology to uncover pathways that influence the outcome of chronic autoimmune and inflammatory disease and the response to treatment in women and men (WP 01).
• Identify protein signatures that predict the outcome of chronic autoimmune and inflammatory disease, using multiplexed antigen arrays, whole proteome analysis and rapid mass spectrometry analysis (WP 02).
• Characterise T and B cell abnormalities that predispose to autoimmunity and infection by studying the ageing immune system in health and disease (WP 03).
• Analyse pathogenic effector T cells and their control by macrophages and dendritic cells and the molecules they secrete using normal and transgenic mice expressing human proteins (WP 04).

We anticipate to identify common mechanisms responsible for the persistence and outcomes in severe autoimmune and inflammatory diseases in females and males and that the results should be rapidly translatable into clinical practice for the benefit of patients.