Understanding Arthritis

Over the next 20 minutes we will explore how we have treated rheumatoid arthritis over the years, looking back to the days when leeches were our best option through to the era of gold therapy, yes you heard me right GOLD! We will then take a closer look at the first line drugs we use now and how they have been clinically repositioned for rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, we will focus on the development of the new biological drugs that have been created specifically to treat autoimmune conditions including rheumatoid arthritis.

Our immune systems have evolved to protect us against infectious diseases. But sometimes they get confused and attacks our own organs. This can lead to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Our lab are interested in finding out how to silence immune cells called CD4 T cells that co-ordinate organ damage in autoimmune diseases. Our work gives us a picture of what T cells look like just before being silenced. This work may help us understand how we can silence CD4 T cells driving autoimmune diseases and track how successful new therapies are at silencing these destructive cells.

Within the last decade there has been an explosion of new therapeutic options for people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. The challenge is to identify those patients that will respond to classical drug regimes, and those that need to go directly on to the newer therapeutic options. We will discuss exciting precision medicine research from the University of Glasgow that aims to identify “biomarkers” for the stratification of patients to the treatment that they are most likely to respond to. We aim to remove elements of 'trail and error' from treatment in favour of more precise medicine.