Vasculitis describes a group of conditions where blood vessels become inflamed and damaged. Some forms affect small vessels in the skin or kidneys, while others involve large arteries supplying the brain or heart. Treatment typically starts with corticosteroids to control inflammation, often combined with drugs that suppress the immune system.
What's actually going on in research
Trials are testing targeted therapies that block specific immune signals, including JAK inhibitors, complement blockers, and monoclonal antibodies like rituximab and mepolizumab. Researchers are working to find treatments that control inflammation without the side effects of long-term steroids, and to identify biomarkers that predict which patients will respond to which drugs.
Targeted immune therapies
Drugs that block specific immune pathways are replacing broad immunosuppression in some forms of vasculitis. Rituximab is now standard for ANCA-associated vasculitis, and trials are testing whether other targeted drugs can induce remission with fewer side effects.
Steroid-sparing strategies
Researchers are testing regimens that use less prednisone or eliminate it entirely. The goal is to control vasculitis while avoiding weight gain, diabetes, bone loss, and infections that come with long-term steroid use.
Complement inhibitors
Drugs that block the complement system show promise in ANCA-associated vasculitis. Early trials suggest they may help patients who don't respond fully to standard treatment or who relapse frequently.
What to know before you search
Eligibility typically depends on vasculitis type, disease activity, prior treatments, and organ involvement such as kidney or lung damage.
What types of trials are currently open
- Treatment trials — Testing new drugs or drug combinations to induce remission in active vasculitis. Often compare new approaches to standard steroid-based treatment.
- Maintenance trials — Testing whether new drugs can keep vasculitis in remission after initial treatment. Focus on preventing relapse while minimizing side effects.
- Steroid-reduction trials — Testing whether newer drugs allow patients to use lower steroid doses or stop steroids sooner than standard protocols.
- Relapsing disease trials — Studies for people whose vasculitis has returned after initial treatment. May test salvage therapies or new combinations.
- Biomarker studies — Following people with vasculitis to identify blood or tissue markers that predict flares, guide treatment choices, or indicate when it's safe to reduce medication.
Recently added Vasculitis trials
SysteMic vAsculitis pRognosis and ouTcome
This will be a pragmatic programme of research, consecutively recruiting all-comers who have been referred to secondary care for assessment of suspected Systemic Vasculitis (SV) into a longitudinal inception cohort. For patients with a pre-existing diagnosis, data on the disease onset will be collected retrospectively. All patients followed prospectively from the time of inclusion into the study will be followed at intervals corresponding to the recommended standard of care. We will invite participants to consent to the whole programme of research in order to allow their samples, as well as their data, to be used for in multiple related projects that have the same common aim. In this long-term inception cohort we will collect data on clinical features, prognostic factors and outcomes of patients diagnosed with a SV over the course of 10 years. We will examine the role of clinical features, imaging and biomarkers in the characterisation of the disease with a particular focus on risk stratification. This will be closely integrated with the other objectives of the study: analysing clinical features, imaging characteristics, outcomes, rates and predictors of relapses and remission, in order to obtain a prognostic stratification of the patients and to capture a cohort of patients at high risk of relapse and poor outcome who could inform on the potential use of more intensive treatment strategies to be assessed in future studies. The SMART programme will be guided by three main overarching themes: 1. "Theme 1": The identification of risk factors associated with poor outcome, relapse and failure to achieve remission 2. "Theme 2": The assessment of different tools to assess risk factors (imaging, biomarkers, clinical features) 3. "Theme 3": The analysis of cohorts of SV patients in observational studies The overarching aims of the study will be overlapping throughout the different investigations outlined in the following paragraphs analyzing: outcomes (including treatment-derived damage), monitoring and relapse, and remission in SV. We aim to follow patients up over a total of 10 years, in order to provide the richest and most complete set of data that has ever been collected for this patient group.
CD19/BCMA UCAR-T for B Cell-Related Autoimmune Disease
This is an exploratory, open-label, single-arm clinical study designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of QT-219CX. QT-219CX is a universal allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) product targeting both CD19 and BCMA. The study targets subjects with refractory B-cell-related autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), multi-drug resistant nephrotic syndrome (NS), IgA nephropathy (IgAN), systemic sclerosis (SSc), and ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) .The research is divided into two phases: a dose-escalation phase and a dose-expansion phase. Dose Escalation: Utilizes a standard "3+3" design to evaluate potential recommended dose(RD) and identify dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) .Treatment Procedure: Eligible subjects will receive a lymphodepleting conditioning regimen followed by a single intravenous infusion of QT-219CX .Primary Objectives: The primary goals are to evaluate the safety profile, including the incidence of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), and to assess clinical response rates at 90 days post-infusion .Follow-up: Subjects will be monitored for pharmacokinetics (cell expansion), pharmacodynamics (B-cell depletion), and long-term safety for up to two years .
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