Blauvelt et al. shows superior and sustained efficacy for risankizumab in maintaining skin clearance over time versus placebo upon withdrawal, alongside a favourable safety profile in chronic plaque psoriasis through a phase 3, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, assessing PASI 90 and sPGA score of 0/1 at Week 16.

December 2020

Highlights of 2020

Please click the links below to go to the CSF review of each paper

2020 unfolded apace, dominated by COVID-19 - we have all had to adapt in our practice and in our knowledge base. Amid this there have continued to be a constant flow of publications and science in cytokine signaling, and as in previous years as we come the end of 2020, I will highlight some of the notable papers of the year. You can find the most notable papers, as selected by CSF Steering Committee Chair Professor Iain McInnes, with links to their respective detailed summaries below:

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Trials of JAKi have been conducted in many therapy areas, including rheumatology, dermatology and gastroenterology. In 2019, a task force was set up to create a consensus to guide clinicians on how to use JAKi in clinical practice. This systematic literature review conducted in 2019 support this consensusIn line with EULAR’s standardised operating procedures for recommendations, a literature search was conducted in EMBASE, Medline and the Cochrane Library databases. To evaluate the efficacy of t...

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Both ACR and EULAR recommend adding a biologic or targeted synthetic DMARD in patients who do not achieve treatment goals at follow-up. Findings indicated that an immediate switch in mechanism of action (from JAKi to TNFi and vice versa) following treat-to-target principles is feasible with minimal risk of flare regardless of whether patients are switched due to non-response or incomplete-response.SELECT-COMPARE followed treat-to-target principles to examine the efficacy of switching in two pati...

November 2020

This integrated Phase III safety analysis of UPA showed that UPA had a similar profile to ADA and MTX for serious infections, malignancies, and thromboembolic events. Patients receiving UPA had increased risk of HZ and creatine phosphokinase elevation versus ADA.This integrated Phase III safety analysis of UPA examined >3500 RA patients and 4000 patient-years of exposure. Data were pooled from 3834 patients in SELECT-NEXT, SELECT-BEYOND, SELECT-MONOTHERAPY, SELECT-COMPARE and SELECT-EARLY studie...

October 2020

Itacitinib is an orally active JAK inhibitor and effectively delayed disease onset, reduced symptom severity, and accelerated recovery of inflammatory diseases in mouse models. Covington M et al demonstrated itacitinib’s high selectivity for JAK 1, its inhibition on IL-2 induced T cell proliferation and JAK/STAT signalling, its ability to also inhibit of the JAK/STAT pathway in response to IL-6 stimulation, and its effect on rat adjuvant induced arthritis model. The study used recombinant enzym...

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BARI demonstrated to be a safe immune modulator that reduces the concentrations biomarkers of lung fibrosis and inflammation in RA patients, including a subgroup with interstitial lung involvement. Professor Alessandro and colleagues analysed the effects of baricitinib in a population of RA and RA-ILD patients in a real-life setting, describing any changes in lung function parameters, serum inflammatory biomarkers and fibrotic biomarkers after 6 months of treatment. Fifteen patients were recruit...
BARI may potentially interrupt the passage of SARS-CoV-2 into the target cells by binding to AAK1 and GAK, which are regulators of the ACE2 receptor regulator identified for its uptake, and could also treat cytokine storm through suppression JAK1/JAK2. Professor Zhang and et al reviewed BARI, as a potential drug to prevent SARS-COV-2 from entering target cells. They also evaluated BARI’s ability to control COVID-19 induced cytokine storm. As a cell surface protein, ACE2 is involved in receptor-m...

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September 2020

Concerns surrounding increased rates of PE and cardiovascular associated deaths has led to black box warnings when prescribing JAK inhibitors. As such, ongoing investigations regarding cardiovascular and VTE event risks in JAK inhibitor therapies, both clinical and real-world, are vital. Mease and colleagues consider data from clinical tofacitinib development programmes, and the ongoing real-data study A3921133. Conclusions from data analysis state that those with pre-existing cardiovascular and...
Autoantibodies associated with the onset of RA have gained attention in recent years as prognostic biomarkers. Though not used diagnostically, anti-CarbV (carbamylated vimentin) and anti-MCV (vimentin modified by citrullination) baseline titers are being investigated as predictors of treatment response. In this post-hoc analysis of data from the RA-BEGIN cohort of active RA patients, López-Romero and colleagues consider the potential predictive values of baseline anti-CarbV and anti-MCV titers r...