Lupus doesn't behave like one disease.
MetaboType is building longitudinal biological models designed to understand why patients differ — and why the same patient changes over time.
Systemic lupus erythematosus is highly heterogeneous. Disease activity, organ involvement and treatment response can vary substantially between patients — and within the same patient over time.
That creates a fundamental precision-medicine challenge: how do we understand a disease that keeps changing when most biological measurements are taken only occasionally?
Lupus is dynamic. Measurement is episodic.
Lupus can change substantially between clinical visits, but disease assessment still relies heavily on periodic clinical evaluation, laboratory testing and patient-reported symptoms.
These tools are essential. But they provide snapshots of a disease that continues to evolve between those snapshots.
Disease activity can be difficult to interpret
Symptoms, laboratory findings and underlying disease biology do not always move together.
Treatment response takes time to understand
It can take weeks or months to determine whether a new therapy is producing the desired biological and clinical effect.
Organ involvement can evolve
Kidney, neurological and other organ involvement can emerge or change during the course of disease.
Treatment introduces another biological variable
Clinicians must balance therapeutic effect with potential toxicity and tolerability.
Flares are often recognized after disease has already changed
The opportunity is to understand more of the biological transition occurring between stable disease and clinical escalation.
We can measure lupus at clinic visits.
We have far less visibility into what happens between them.
MetaboType is being developed to help create a higher-resolution, longitudinal view of that changing biology.
Living with lupus means living with uncertainty.
Living with lupus can mean constantly trying to interpret signals from your own body. These are the kinds of questions many people carry between appointments — not because something is wrong, but because so much of the disease happens out of view.
- ?Is this fatigue lupus — or just a difficult week?
- ?Does this new pain mean my disease is becoming more active?
- ?Is my medication actually working?
- ?Is something changing even though my routine bloodwork still looks stable?
- ?Are my kidneys being affected?
- ?Could the disease begin affecting my brain or nervous system?
- ?Could it affect my vision or another organ system?
- ?Is this the beginning of a flare — or something temporary?
- ?What can I change in my daily life that may help me feel and function better?
- ?How do I explain what I am experiencing when I only see my specialist periodically?
Better longitudinal information could help answer some of these questions — not by replacing your care team, but by giving you and your clinicians more to work with.
More information about your own biology can change the conversation.
MetaboType is being developed around the idea that people living with lupus should have access to a richer picture of how their biology changes over time. Frequent, longitudinal measurement could eventually help patients and their care teams understand patterns that are difficult to see from occasional clinic visits alone.
Understand your personal baseline
Instead of comparing every measurement only with a population reference range, longitudinal tracking may help establish what is typical for you.
See how your biology changes over time
Track direction and rate of change rather than relying on isolated measurements.
Understand what changes after treatment
Observe biological patterns before and after medication changes or other clinical interventions.
Explore relationships with daily life
With appropriate clinical guidance and validation, longitudinal information may help researchers and care teams study relationships between biology and factors such as sleep, stress, diet and activity.
Advocate with better information
A richer longitudinal record may help you communicate what has been happening between appointments and participate more actively in decisions about your own care.
MetaboType does not encourage patients to modify medication or treatment based on its measurements. Lifestyle information is an opportunity to identify personal patterns and support conversations with healthcare professionals — not a treatment for lupus.
The goal is not to give patients more numbers.
It is to give them better visibility into their own health.
MetaboType is being developed to help people move from simply reacting to disease events toward understanding their own biological trajectory — alongside their clinical care team. The aim is greater agency, understanding and self-advocacy, with personalized information that supports — never replaces — professional care.
More biological resolution for better-informed care.
You manage the patient continuously. Your measurements are intermittent.
Rheumatologists manage a disease that changes between visits, varies dramatically between patients, and often requires decisions based on incomplete or delayed biological information. MetaboType is being developed to provide a complementary longitudinal layer of biological data.
A decision-support layer
Is disease biology becoming more active?
Add longitudinal metabolic context to symptoms, laboratory findings and clinical assessment.
Is the treatment working?
Observe biological activity over time and characterize whether the patient's metabolic trajectory is moving in a direction consistent with response.
Complementary to established response criteria — not a replacement.
Are we beginning to see toxicity or unintended effects?
Explore longitudinal metabolic changes that may provide additional context around therapeutic exposure, tolerability and potential toxicity.
A development objective; not a validated toxicity test.
Is renal involvement changing?
Use longitudinal urinary and metabolic measurements to investigate changes relevant to lupus nephritis and renal biology.
Is this patient stable between visits?
Provide denser biological information that may help clinicians understand what occurred between conventional assessments.
Is there evidence that a flare may be developing?
Investigate whether patterns of biological change precede clinically apparent escalation.
Decision support — not decision replacement.
MetaboType complements clinical judgment, established laboratory tests, disease-activity measures and the physician–patient relationship. Our objective is to give rheumatologists higher-resolution longitudinal information that may enhance the quality of clinical decisions and the care they can provide.
One longitudinal record. Two empowered participants.
MetaboType strengthens the relationship between patient and clinician — not bypass either one.
For the person living with lupus
- Better visibility into their own changing biology.
- More informed conversations.
- Greater ability to understand personal patterns.
- A stronger voice in their own care.
For the rheumatologist
- Denser biological information between visits.
- More context around response, renal biology and changing disease activity.
- Higher-resolution longitudinal tracking.
- Additional information to support clinical decision-making.
A shared longitudinal view of the patient.
Four questions we are working to answer
These patient and clinician needs define four major development objectives for MetaboType in lupus.
Development objectives — areas of active research and validation, not clinically validated products.
Is disease activity changing?
Identify metabolic patterns associated with immune dysregulation, inflammation and evolving disease activity.
Is treatment working?
Develop longitudinal signatures associated with therapeutic response and non-response, and characterize the biological response over time.
Is kidney involvement emerging?
Investigate renal and metabolic signals relevant to lupus nephritis, kidney function and treatment response.
Is a flare becoming more likely?
Identify longitudinal changes that may precede clinically apparent disease escalation and develop models of near-term flare risk.
Lupus lives in a connected biological system.
Lupus is not only an inflammatory signal. Disease activity, treatment, kidney function, metabolism, environmental exposure and other physiological systems interact continuously. MetaboType is designed to measure patterns across interconnected biological domains.
Immune regulation
Metabolic pathways associated with immune activation and inflammatory biology.
Oxidative stress
Signals associated with redox balance and cellular stress.
Tryptophan–kynurenine metabolism
Pathways closely connected with immune regulation and inflammatory metabolism.
Renal biology
Urinary metabolites associated with kidney function, metabolism and excretion.
Diet & microbiome
Microbial- and diet-derived metabolites reflecting interactions between nutrition, gut biology and systemic metabolism.
Stress physiology
Steroid-related and other metabolic signals associated with physiological stress.
Therapeutic exposure
Opportunities to characterize drug exposure, metabolism and inter-patient variability.
Learn more →Every patient has a MetaboType.
In lupus, a patient's MetaboType reflects how immune, renal, metabolic, treatment and environmental signals evolve together over time. It is not one laboratory result. It is the changing biological pattern of an individual patient.
- Immune regulation
- Inflammatory metabolism
- Renal biology
- Gut microbial metabolism
- Stress physiology
- Dietary exposure
- Therapeutic exposure
- Individual metabolic baseline
Build it with us.
MetaboType is being developed with the people who understand the problem best — patients, rheumatologists, researchers and therapeutic developers.
Lupus is our beachhead.
Precision autoimmune intelligence is the larger opportunity.
MetaboType is a platform in development. These pathways connect you to our collaboration and research-engagement team — they do not provide access to a clinically validated product.