Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Academic Medical Center/University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Rheumatol. 2011 Sep;38(9):2068-72. doi: 10.3899/jrheum.110426.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease of unspecified etiology that is manifest by persistent inflammation of the synovium. Considerable efforts have been undertaken globally to study the microenvironment of the inflamed synovium, with many encouraging and enlightening results that bring us closer to unmasking the precise etiologies of RA. Subsequent to these efforts, it has been discovered that CD68-positive macrophages present in abundance in the synovial sublining of the inflamed synovium rescind with treatments that induce clinical improvement in RA. Examination of serial synovial biopsies is now commonly used for screening purposes during early drug development, and the number of centers able to perform synovial tissue biopsy sampling according to standardized methods is increasing. Having implemented the use of serial synovial tissue biopsies to evaluate the effects of new treatments on the group level in early proof of principle studies, it is the ambition of the OMERACT Synovial Tissue Group to identify synovial diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers that could be used in individual patients. Therefore, we started a prospective study termed the Synoviomics Project aimed at the identification of novel diagnostic and prognostic synovial biomarkers. We will use straightforward and powerful technologies to analyze patient material and assess clinical parameters to identify such biomarkers. These markers may be used in the future to identify patients who are at risk of having persistent and destructive disease and to start tailor-made targeted therapies in an early phase to prevent autonomous disease progression and irreversible joint damage.
类风湿关节炎（RA）是一种病因不明的慢性疾病，其特征为滑膜持续性炎症。全球范围内已经做出了相当大的努力来研究炎症滑膜的微环境，许多令人鼓舞和富有启发性的结果使我们更接近于揭示 RA 的精确病因。此后，人们发现，在炎症滑膜的滑膜下衬里中大量存在的 CD68 阳性巨噬细胞，在诱导 RA 临床改善的治疗中会消退。目前，在早期药物开发过程中，通常会进行连续滑膜活检以用于筛查目的，并且能够按照标准化方法进行滑膜组织活检采样的中心数量正在增加。在早期原理验证研究中，已经实施了使用连续滑膜组织活检来评估新治疗方法对群组的影响，因此，OMERACT 滑膜组织小组的目标是确定可用于个体患者的滑膜诊断和预后生物标志物。因此，我们启动了一项名为 Synoviomics 项目的前瞻性研究，旨在确定新型的诊断和预后滑膜生物标志物。我们将使用简单而强大的技术来分析患者材料并评估临床参数，以确定这些生物标志物。这些标志物将来可能用于识别那些存在持续性和破坏性疾病风险的患者，并在早期阶段开始定制靶向治疗，以防止自主疾病进展和不可逆的关节损伤。
