An autoimmune disease occurs when the body's immune system is chronically overactive and attacks healthy cells.

Normally, our immune system protects our body and works to keep us healthy: it helps resist infection. But viruses and bacteria can rapidly mutate to evade the immune system; and so our immune system must mutate just as rapidly to protect us.

‘Bad mutations’ are an inevitable by-product of these rapid mutations, and it is these cells that are likely to multiply and form a ‘rogue clone’ in response to the body’s own tissues.

Hope Research will identify bad mutations in these cells, and use sophisticated gene editing techniques to determine the cellular consequences of particular combinations of bad mutations for gene expression patterns in the rogue cells.