“Ultimately, the goal is to understand the pathway of RA so that we can cure it or put it into remission. Perhaps we even can use the information we glean to treat other diseases,” says Dr. Firestein. “The most interesting advances come when people think outside the box. Good research requires teamwork and experienced investigators who are willing to mentor novice peers,” he says. “It is critical to mentor young investigators and help them to develop their research careers. It is unlikely that I will be able to cure RA in my lifetime, but the people trained by myself and others will take what we have done and move it to the next level; and we all will contribute to a cure when it ultimately happens.” He adds that he was fortunate in his career to have a mentor in Nathan Zvaifler, MD.
Dr. Firestein says the greatest challenge of his career has been maintaining focus. “There are so many interesting things that one could study, it is easy to get sidetracked and try to do too many things. If something is interesting but of lower yield, you have to put it on the back burner,” he explains. At the same time, he says, “You can’t always just take on the highest-yield projects. Sometimes you need to do something riskier that has a greater potential for payoff.”
While gratifying, research is not always exciting, Dr. Firestein admits. “Working in the lab is a combination of repetition and failure. There rarely is a ‘eureka’ moment. Success and results come incrementally,” he says.
Accepting the award at the Arthritis Foundation’s National Meeting in Boulder, Colo., in November was especially gratifying for Dr. Firestein. “Studies in this field would be impossible without the Foundation,” he says. “For me, the first grant I received for my signaling work was from the Foundation. I was able to leverage this into a large NIH grant. I am grateful to the Foundation and its belief in innovative studies and researchers like me.”
