Ten secondary school teachers participated last month in the course "Systemic lupus erythematosus: what is it? How can be treated? Let's find a cure!", taught by doctors Josefina Cortés and Cristina Solé, from the Systemic Diseases group at Vall d'Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR). The course is part of the Training Programme on sciences, technology and mathematics organized by the Catalan government.The goal of the 5 hours course was to publicize the disease, to know which are the available treatments and the drugs that are being tested in clinical trials, and to explain the main research lines of the group.The immune system of healthy individuals produces substances called antibodies that protect the organism from virus, bacteria and rare substances. These substances are called antigens. In an autoimmune disease such as lupus, the autoimmune system loses its capacity to differentiate between antigens and healthy cells. Thus, the body starts to produce antibodies against itself that travel through the bloodstream and can cause inflammation. For that reason, lupus is a chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disease that can affect any part of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, kidneys and brain.The cause of lupus is yet unknown and the available treatments have side effects and are only useful to control the disease. The group of doctors Solé and Cortés, led by Dr. Josep Ordi, investigates which could be the possible causes of these inflammations in order to find a system to heal the disease. The group is also focused in finding biomarkers to determine the evolution of the disease.