Vivian Bykerk, MD, an associate attending rheumatologist at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), is one of the researchers involved in the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus Network. Through the AMP, the researchers will work to define the biology behind rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
This huge collaborative effort to share data and tissue samples includes 11 research groups across the country. The groups will “study and leverage new technologies to identify pathways and markers,” according to Dr. Bykerk.
Her team at HSS will provide tissue and blood samples from rheumatoid arthritis patients having joint replacement. Those samples will be studied at various sites using different technologies. “It’s the beginning of Big Data medicine,” says Dr. Bykerk. “The various sites will use a systems biology approach to analyze and see patterns.”
She says, “While looking at clinical characteristics and outcomes, the researchers will also start to look at single cells, gene expressions and epicenters.”
The initial tasks will be determining how all the sites will work together. Should they look at fresh or frozen samples? Do they want to use blood or tissue samples? How do the novel, promising technologies link to what happens with patients?
“Skeptics question whether it can work. Supporters believe it’s the only way to go,” says Dr. Bykerk.
James O’Dell, MD, Receives Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize for Research in Arthritis
The 2014 Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize for Research in Arthritis was awarded to James O’Dell, MD, for what the national Arthritis Foundation deems the year’s most important scientific paper that will lead to a faster cure for arthritis and related diseases. “Therapies for Active Rheumatoid Arthritis after Methotrexate Failure” appeared in the July 25, 2013, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. O’Dell’s paper described “a study [that] compared the effectiveness of drug therapies for rheumatoid arthritis and found that the use of a less expensive combination of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) produced the same clinical benefits as much more expensive biological treatment,” according to the Arthritis Foundation award announcement.
The study was a 48-week, double-blind, noninferiority trial with randomly assigned 353 participants, who had active rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate therapy, to a triple regimen of DMARDs (methotrexate, sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine) or etanercept plus methotrexate.
