Birmingham Scientists Edge Closer to New Arthritis Drug
A team of Birmingham scientists have identified a new drug therapy that could offer relief for the 600,000 rheumatoid arthritis sufferers in the UK in the near future.
Experimental work by a team at the University of Birmingham's Medical School has identified that a drug called RGD peptide can target the immune cells that cause damage to the joints of patients with arthritis.
The RGD peptide kills the cells by switching on a cell suicide programme that can operate in any cell under the right circumstances. If the early promise of this work is fulfilled, the RGD peptide should offer valuable treatment for patients who have rheumatoid arthritis and also for a variety of other conditions.
Now the award of a major five-year programme grant of almost £874,000 by the Arthritis Research Campaign means that the team can develop RDG peptide to a stage where it can be tested in clinical trials.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an incurable auto-immune condition that happens when the body's own immune cells attack the joints, leading to pain, inflammation and swelling in the joints. It can strike anyone, although two out of three sufferers are women.
Mike Salmon, Reader in Experimental Rheumatology at the university's Division of Immunity and Infection, has been involved in this work for the past decade. He said the importance of the team's approach to RA was that it was likely to lead to treatment for people who already long-established, severe disease, not just those people in the early stages.
"During their life time most people suffer from short-lived episodes of arthritis, usually associated with infections, which usually get better spontaneously," explained Dr Salmon.
"The odd thing about rheumatoid arthritis is that it doesn't get better. In the course of a normal immune response to an infection, a large number of immune cells collect at the site of infection, and when it has cleared up, they self-destruct. But in patients with RA the cells are actively blocked from dying off, because they receive signals that tell them not to.
"We have managed to identify a drug - RDG peptide - that can over-ride this signal, so enabling the cells to die off. And this offers a potentially important treatment in the medium term."
The Arthritis Research Campaign is the fifth biggest medical research charity in the UK, and exists to find the cause of and cure for arthritis and rheumatic disease. The University of Birmingham is a leading centre for arthritis research, and currently receives more than £3m from the charity.
