In his review, Dr. Bucala plans to cover insights in high-dimensional molecular profiling, new clinical phenotypes and how they may lead to effective therapies and improve predictions of patient outcomes. All have implications for the better application of precision medicine, notes Dr. Bucala in an interview with The Rheumatologist.
“Lupus is an example of a disease with little insight into which patients will respond to treatment,” Dr. Bucala says. “The hope is that better characterization can be achieved through the use of high-dimensional molecular profiling.”
Depending on new information that may be published closer to the annual meeting, Dr. Bucala hopes to highlight up to 10 papers published in the past year.
“I think an area that’s important is better targeted therapies for precision medicine,” he says. “Some of those insights will come from the increasing use of sophisticated, high dimensional profiling technologies,” which allow researchers to better characterize subtypes of disease. Such information may be used to make better-informed prognoses for patients and more informed therapeutic choices.
“It also could potentially allow us to identify new targets or new pathways that may be amenable to therapy,” Dr. Bucala says.
Further, use of sophisticated computational algorithms to analyze characteristics of a particular cell or a molecular signaling pathway may help identify correlations and associations not possible in previous years, according to Dr. Bucala. However, computational approaches, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, are techniques that require thoughtful application because of the intrinsic complexity of rheumatologic diseases.
Don’t miss the opportunity to see the Year in Review presentations and other expert sessions on important rheumatology topics during ACR Convergence 2020. Register now.
Catherine Kolonko is a medical writer based in Oregon.
