Lupus Immunology Group
Understanding lupus and the immune system in young people
A space for young people, families and professionals
Childhood lupus, from immune cells to long-term health
Dr George Robinson is a Principal Research Fellow and group leader at UCL, supported by Arthritis UK.
Our lab studies childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE): why the immune system attacks the body, why the disease varies so much between young people, and why it raises the risk of heart disease later in life. We combine patient samples, multi-omics and machine learning to find markers that can guide treatment.
George is a 2025 IUIS Rising Star in Immunology and has received the BSI Early Career Research Excellence Award and the BSR Garrod Award. He also writes and illustrates the ImmuNinjas children's books.
For curious kids and curious scientists
Train your immune cells, defeat the Spikers and read the ImmuNinjas books online. Made for children aged 5 and up, and their grown-ups.
Start playing In development
A planned public browser for published results from our UK childhood lupus cohort. See an early design preview. No real data yet.
See the preview
George featured in a Royal Free Charity campaign shown on a digital screen in Leicester Square, highlighting how charitable funding supports our lupus research in the UCL Division of Medicine. The screen space was donated by Ocean Outdoor UK.
Heather Cross won a FOCIS travel award and was one of two UCL nominees selected for the FOCIS Advanced Immunology workshop in Colorado. She also arranged and carried out research visits to our collaborators at the University of Colorado to plan work on joint patient cohorts.
Our systems immunology study, with joint first authors Heather Cross and Junjie Peng, defines biologically distinct type I interferon endotypes in childhood-onset SLE, links them to long-term clinical trajectories and identifies LAMP3 as a robust, scalable biomarker. Published open access in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, where it was also highlighted in the Editor's “Greetings” feature for the June 2026 issue.
Read the paper
Heather's poster was shortlisted for a poster prize at the British Society for Immunology Congress in Liverpool, supported by a BSI travel grant. She also gave a selected talk at the EFIS Sex Differences in Immunity congress in Paris.
Our Nature Reviews Rheumatology review covers ten years of advances in cSLE pathogenesis, from genetics and epigenetics to immune mechanisms, and what they mean for diagnosis and targeted therapy. Written with Coziana Ciurtin, David Isenberg, Alexandre Belot, Lori Tucker and Andrea Knight.
Read the review
George joined hosts Brenda Raud and Jason Goldsmith to talk about lupus, sex differences in autoimmunity and what our research is finding.
Listen to episode 119
