Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on March 3, 2007
Rheumatology 2007 46(4):563-564; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kel424
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
EDITORIALS |
No B cellsno active RA? Advances in B cell depletion in RArepeated therapy under conditions of clinical practice
Charite Universitätsmedizin and Deutsches Rheumaforschungszentrum, Berlin, Germany.
Correspondence to: Prof. Dr Thomas Dörner. E-mail: thomas.doerner@charite.de
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Early observations in 1999 by Jo Edwards group at University College London, UK [1] provided evidence that using a B-cell depleting antibody licensed for non-Hodgkin lymphoma was able to significantly reduce signs and symptoms of RA with an acceptable safety profile during a single treatment course of induced B-cell depletion and subsequently led to clinical development of this drug based on large randomized clinical trials (proof of concept/IIa, DANCER, REFLEX) and finally to approval in the US, Switzerland and the EU for this indication. This is the first cell-directed therapy for the treatment of RA arriving in the clinics after studies of T-cell directed therapy using anti-CD4 antibodies opened this area more than 10 yrs ago [2]. Importantly, it offers alternative treatment options to severe RA patients inadequately responding to TNF blockers.
The breath-taking pace of this clinical development with inducing a clinical response for several
Retreatment
Subsets of patients
Most frequently occurring side effects
Mechanism of action
Conclusion
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J. C. W. Edwards, G. Cambridge, and M. J. Leandro Repeated B-cell depletion in clinical practice Rheumatology, September 1, 2007; 46(9): 1509 - 1509. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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