SQUEEZE Bio-Test Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The SQUEEZE Exposure Study (Bio-Test Study)
IRAS ID
330277
Contact name
Costantino Pitzalis
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen Mary University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 6 months, 30 days
Research summary
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is one of the most important chronic inflammatory disorders in Europe. The disease has an enormous health-related quality of life and socioeconomic impact. While there has been much progress made over the past decades in treating arthritis, a significant number of patients (approximately 40%) do not respond to specific drug therapies, and 5-20% of people with the disease do not respond to any of the current drugs available.
Currently there is a broad choice of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) available to treat RA. These different drugs work in different ways, by targeting different biomarkers in the diseased tissue. Biomarkers are biologic molecules that are useful in measuring the presence or progression of a disease or the effects of a particular treatment. However, without knowing what biomarkers are present in each patient with RA, patients are still treated with a “trial and error” approach, often trying several drugs before they find the right treatment for them, with potential unwanted side-effects, joint damage and worse outcomes, a reality of the treatment process.
The main objective of this research is to create a biomedical resource to help identify and classify the cells in diseased tissue taken from the swollen joints of patients with RA. We will use this information, along with clinical data collected from visits to the hospital to understand better why the presence or absence of specific cells and molecules (“prevalent synovial pathways”) may be responsible for why some people respond or don’t respond to different drugs.
This study is part of the wider SQUEEZE consortium, which aims to address how biomarkers can be used to optimize disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/WM/0209
Date of REC Opinion
20 Oct 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion