A recent paper that was published in the “Nature” journal has redefined rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and potentially opened the door to the development of targeted therapies. Researchers analyzed tissue collected from the synovial joints of almost 80 people diagnosed with moderate to high rheumatoid arthritis and built up a massive atlas of RA synovial changes from more than 314,000 single cells.
This atlas could potentially lead to the development of targeted therapies that take into account the diversity of the rheumatoid arthritis disease process. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that typically affects joints in the wrists, hands and knees. The condition inflames the joint lining and damages joint tissue, which can result in symptoms such as chronic or long-lasting pain, deformity, unsteadiness, stiffness, tenderness, swelling in the joint, fever, weight loss and fatigue.
As with many other autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis is incurable and can only be managed through treatment protocols such as painkillers, COX-2 inhibitors and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including naproxen or ibuprofen. In many cases, physicians will deploy treatments that target inflammatory cytokines and pathways such as the pro-inflammatory JAK-STAT transcriptional regulatory pathway, stimulation of T and B cells together, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF).
However, the diversity in disease pathology among RA patients means that treatments don’t respond uniformly across the board. While some RA patients may respond positively to one treatment, another RA patient may not see any benefit from the same treatment protocol despite continued use.
The autoimmune condition currently affects at least 1 out of every 100 people globally and around 1.3 million American adults. Developing more personalized treatments for rheumatoid arthritis could help millions of people worldwide, especially RA patients who typically don’t respond to conventional treatments.
The researchers studied 82 synovial tissue samples and used the clinical disease activity index (CDAI) to determine that all participants had RA activity of 10 or higher. Most of the participants had not yet begun treatment or had responded poorly to anti-inflammatory medication methotrexate, or anti-TNF agents, which inhibit proinflammatory signaling, while some of them had osteoarthritis.
The analysis resulted in the creation of an RA synovial cell state atlas containing 77 cell states that included 37 T cell clusters, 14 NK killer cell clusters, 9 B cell clusters and 15 myeloid clusters. The researchers say their findings could help physicians predict treatment responses in different patients and potentially develop personalized treatments for patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
The field of autoimmunity is seeing plenty of scientific interest, and enterprises that are investing in developing immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases such as Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: SCNI) could give patients a respite once the pipelines yield successful results.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: SCNI) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/SCNI
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