Edinburgh scientists to develop exciting treatment for rheumatoid arthritis
Scientists in Edinburgh are hopeful that new research could lead to an exciting treatment for the crippling condition rheumatoid arthritis.
A team led by Dr Rob van ’t Hof at the University of Edinburgh’s Rheumatic Diseases Unit at the Western General Hospital have identified a new class of compounds which could lead to the production of a cheaper but equally effective version of an existing treatment of rheumatoid arthritis called anti-TNF therapy.
This type of drug therapy has revolutionised the treatment of severe rheumatoid arthritis, and over the past five years has transformed the lives of 750 seriously affected patients throughout Scotland.
Now the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc), the medical research charity which pioneered anti-TNF therapy, has awarded arc senior lecturer Dr Van’ t Hof a two-year grant of almost £100,000 to develop his early research into a possible future treatment.
Although only in early laboratory stages, Dr van ’t Hof is enormously excited about his research’s clinical potential. “Some of the most effective treatments for RA are based on giving drugs that inhibit the effects of TNF,” he said. “Unfortunately, anti-TNF therapy is extremely expensive, partly because the treatments have been developed are either antibodies or proteins and they are expensive to produce.
“Because of this, only a fraction of patients who might benefit from anti-TNF can actually be given it. Our new compounds show promise as anti-TNF treatment and are not proteins or antibodies and are therefore cheaper to produce. This research has the potential to be hugely significant for RA patients.”
Dr van ’t Hof and his team will now study the effects of the new compounds in experimental laboratory models. If the experiments are positive, further work will be started to try to develop them for use in clinical studies of patients with RA.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a serious auto-immune condition in which the body’s immune system attacks itself, leading to inflammation, due in part to over production of a substance called TNF within the joint, which causes joint pain and affecting internal organs such as the heart and lungs.
Until anti-TNF therapy came on the market, patients with severe disease who failed to response to existing drugs faced a bleak future. Anti-TNF drugs have transformed the lives of many severely affected patients, but the high cost of around £10,000 per patient per year has led to rationing and some postcode prescribing.
