Conrad Gehrmann, Chair of the Lupus Foundation of America's national board of directors, has appointed Dr. Karen H. Costenbader to be Chair of the Foundation's Medical-Scientific Advisory Council. Dr. Costenbader will lead a multi-disciplinary group of medical experts to address unmet needs in research and professional development efforts on lupus, an unpredictable and misunderstood autoimmune disease that affects at least five million people globally.

Dr. Costenbader is a rheumatologist who is Director of the Lupus Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 2009, Dr. Costenbader was the first recipient of the Lupus Foundation of America's Mary Betty Stevens Young Investigator Prize, awarded to recognize exceptional achievements in the early part of an investigator's career in lupus research.

The Lupus Foundation of America supports patient-focused research that improves quality of life and stimulates faster progress in efforts to develop new lupus treatments. "People living with lupus have waited long enough to have access to new effective and more tolerable therapies," said Sandra C. Raymond, Chief Executive Office of the Foundation. "In her new leadership role, Dr. Costenbader will further expand the Foundation's strategic partnerships with key opinion leaders in lupus around the world to increase the Foundation's reach and growing impact in efforts to help people with lupus now."

"Lupus is a cruel mystery requiring a comprehensive approach to address the hard questions and to create the change needed for people with lupus, sooner rather than later," said Dr. Costenbader. "I look forward to collaborating with lupus experts around the world to support groundbreaking studies that will improve the lives of lupus patients."

The Lupus Foundation of America was the first national nonprofit organization to support research studies in lupus. Over the past four decades, the Foundation has supported more than 400 lupus research studies conducted at more than 100 medical institutions throughout the United States. Investigators who have received early funding from the Foundation have gone on to contribute toward achieving many of the most important advances in research on lupus. Data generated by the Foundation's early research investments have provided important pathways toward identifying people at highest risk for lupus and stopping the disease before it starts. More information about the Foundation's research efforts are online at lupus.org/research.