Targeting CD-40 – Preliminaries at the EULAR 2012

I had been interested in the question, if CD-40 could be a target for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis as there had been a study with the title: “Common variants at CD40 and other loci confer risk of rheumatoid arthritis” in 2008; link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757650/.


At the EULAR 2012 there has been a study on the subject. P. Fan and colleagues reported a study on arthritic rats, blocking CD40/CD40L and NF-κB. The promising results are represented in the conclusions auf the authors, which follows.


[AB0177] SIMULTANEOUS BLOCKADE OF THE CD40/CD40L AND NF-κB PATHWAYS IMPROVING THERAPY EFFECT ON ARTHRITIC RATS
P. Fan, L. He, D. Pu, W. Zhou, Y. Sun. Department of Rheumatism, the First Affiliated Hospital Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
Conclusions: The expression CD40LIg and IκBα can effectively inhibit inflammatory reaction of arthritic rats. Simultaneous expression CD40LIg and IκBα can improve the therapeutic effect by synergistic effect.


Let’s see how quickly we will see further results on the way a a new target in treating rheumatoid arthritis.


PS. More on CD-40 on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD40_(protein)