Rheumatoid Arthritis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Rheumatoid Arthritis, including details on treatment, symptoms, causes, medication.

Antigen-specific therapy of rheumatoid arthritis.

Ichim TE, Zheng X, Suzuki M, Kubo N, Zhang X, Min LR, Beduhn ME, Riordan NH, Inman RD, Min WP

University of Western Ontario, Departments of Surgery, Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology, 339 Windermere Road, University Hospital C9-136, London, Ontario, N6A 5A5, Canada.

BACKGROUND: Immunotherapy offers the promise of antigen-specific suppression of pathological immune responses in conditions such as autoimmunity and organ transplantation. Substantial advances have been made in recent years in terms of understanding basic immunological mechanisms of autoreactivity, as well as clinically implementing immune-based therapies that are antigen nonspecific. OBJECTIVE: To provide an integrated overview of the current state of the art in terms of antigen-specific tolerance induction, as well as to predict future directions for the field. METHODS: Examples of successes and failures of antigen-specific immunotherapy were sought. Particular attention was paid to the well-established collagen II-induced model of arthritis. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: Previous failures of antigen-specific immunotherapy were associated with lack of identification of clinically relevant antigens, as well as inappropriate tolerogenic methodologies. The advances in proteomics combined with novel gene-specific immune modulatory techniques place today's translational researchers in a unique position to tackle the problem of antigen-specific immunotherapeutic protocols.

Published 15 January 2008 in Expert Opin Biol Ther, 8(2): 191-9.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Rheumatoid Arthritis Research Today. All Rights Reserved.