Systemic Lupus Erythrematosis

Systemic lupus erythrematosis (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease in which autoreactive immune cells and circulating autoantibodies drive progressive damage to multiple organs, most critically the kidneys and skin. Lupus nephritis develops in up to 50% of SLE patients and remains a leading cause of morbidity. Our model combines a standardised 3D glomerular organoid, assembled from podocytes, glomerular endothelial cells, and human kidney ECM, with immune cells derived from lupus patients. This architecture allows the patient’s own autoimmune response to act directly on healthy kidney tissue, enabling disease-specific modelling without requiring renal biopsy from the patient. The same patient-derived immune component can be applied across multiple target tissues: glomerular organoid for lupus nephritis, keratinocytes for cutaneous involvement, and aortic endothelial cells for vascular inflammation, enabling multi-organ disease profiling within a single modular platform.