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Oxford BioDynamics have announced it is collaborating with the King's College London team in the immediate follow up of the APIPPRA trial, the largest RA prevention trial to date.
The APIPPRA trial of Abatacept was a multicentre trial in 213 individuals at high risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Break-through results of the trial were recently published in The Lancetin February 2024. Prof Andrew Cope, who led the research, commented: “The APIPPRA trial is the largest rheumatoid arthritis prevention trial to date, and the first to show a treatment effective in preventing the onset of disease in people at risk.”
In the immediate follow-up of the successful trial, The King’s College London team has now engaged OBD’s EpiSwitch technology, which has already delivered successful results on prognosis of disease and prediction of response to treatment, to identify which patients are at the highest risk of progressing to RA and are likely to benefit from the therapeutic intervention with Abatacept, in both the short and long term.
While 92.8% of those treated with Abatacept were RA-free at the end of year one, about 25% of this group ultimately progressed to rheumatoid arthritis by the end of the second year after stopping treatment. This highlights the importance of an accurate risk assessment and the need for improved stratification tools to identify those individuals who will have the benefit of a durable, efficacious response – a task well-suited to EpiSwitch biomarkers developed by OBD.
Professor Andrew Cope, King’s College London said: “There are currently no drugs available that prevent this potentially crippling disease. The initial results from the APIPPRA trial could be good news for people at risk of arthritis. We are excited about our collaboration with Oxford Biodynamics and the early results in helping us identify patients at highest risk and how to reduce it. EpiSwitch® technology is delivering biomarkers of high biological relevance.”
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common chronic inflammatory immune-mediated disease of joints, afflicting more than 500,000 in the UK and another 1.5M in the US. If not adequately treated, the condition leads to destruction of synovial joints and significant disability. RA is costly to individuals and their families; one third of patients with arthritis stop work within two years of onset because of the deterioration in quality of life associated with their disease. In the UK, RA costs are estimated to be in the region of £5 billion per year through direct costs to the National Health Service (NHS) and associated healthcare providers and indirect costs associated with early mortality and loss of productivity.
Dr Alexandre Akoulitchev, CSO at OBD, said: “With fast adoption of EpiSwitch 3D genomic biomarkers across many fields, our collaboration with Professor Cope is of particular importance. The value delivered by our proven biomarker technology in the field of prognostic and predictive biomarkers in oncology, should and would be matched by applications in rheumatoid arthritis. Treatment of autoimmune conditions could greatly benefit from the accuracy and robustness of blood-based EpiSwitch readouts. With regards to delivering benefits to patients and health system economics, there is no time to lose.”
Abatacept is a biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug recommended for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Abatacept has shown efficacy in the treatment of active rheumatoid arthritis when used as monotherapy or in combination with conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in patients with an inadequate response to other conventional or biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.