Three years after the Arthritis Foundation (AF) created a multifaceted research program specific to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), it has partnered with the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) to produce a 2-day RA conference featuring talks on a diverse array of research initiatives, including some that the AF funded.
The 2-day 2024 Rheumatoid Arthritis Research Summit, which starts on April 12, 2024, is the first of its kind, according to one of the co-chairs, Mary K. Crow, MD, an attending physician and senior researcher at HSS in New York City.
“To my knowledge, there is really no forum that brings together RA researchers in a focused way,” Crow said. She specified that of the many conferences that include research on RA, none direct full attention to RA alone.
Since its inception, the AF RA research program has been awarding three to four research grants per year. Updates on some of this work will be presented, but the goal of the summit is broader. An array of investigators will represent a very diverse set of research interests, Crow explained.
Among these, Costantino Pitzalis, MD, PhD, professor of rheumatology, Queen Mary University, London, United Kingdom, will deliver a keynote address on clinical and treatment response endotypes.
“One of the important realities that will be addressed in several talks is that not every patient responds well to the currently availably therapies,” Crow said. “In fact, few completely respond to any therapy. We really need to understand these differences in response and how therapies we have now can be targeted more appropriately.”
Research on this theme includes the potential for genetic markers to be used to individualize tumor necrosis factor inhibitors, the way in which biomarkers might be employed to guide use of methotrexate, and progress in developing a liquid biopsy to personalize treatment on the basis of immune cell phenotypes.
In a very different way, several other talks will address individualized care as it relates to patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and joint decision-making reached by patient-physician interactions. The concept of trying to tailor treatment to patient priorities is hardly a novel idea, but Crow hopes that tools will become more rigorous and reproducible.
“It is still a little challenging to understand how to collect PRO data and then to incorporate this into management,” Crow said. She noted that the AF has recently engaged investigators from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, to create PROs that “generate clear, analyzable data.” This is an important research area not just for individualized care but for seeking therapeutic targets not currently addressed, she said.
There will be work presented at the RA Research Summit on the microbiome, immunometabolism, and the relationship between RA and its common comorbidities, including osteoporosis, interstitial lung disease, and cardiovascular syndromes. All of these link to important clinical issues but might also lead to a broader understanding of the pathophysiology of RA and new places to look for treatment targets.
New insights mined from the Veterans’ Affairs RA Registry, a presentation scheduled for the last day of the conference, draws attention to the growing interest in finding new sources of data. The randomized clinical trial is a gold standard for addressing many clinical issues, but registry data has the potential to get at different types of issues.
“As the analytics of registry data improves with better methodology, including artificial intelligence, registries are being increasingly understood to be a valuable data source,” Crow said. She is not yet certain that big data will ever compete directly with controlled trials for guiding practice, but she does see its potential to address questions that cannot be addressed with a prospective study.
Crow reports no potential conflicts of interest.
Source link : https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/first-its-kind-ra-research-summit-offers-diverse-program-2024a100064k?src=rss
Author :
Publish date : 2024-04-01 21:10:16
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.