GNS and Biogen Idec Identify RA Drug Targets

This is the first time that a patient-data driven, computer model of rheumatoid arthritis has been developed to generate patient-specific predictions to the response to existing drugs and the response to inhibiting novel targets and pathways of the disease.

GNS Healthcare, the leading healthcare analytics company focused on enabling personalized medicine to improve human health, announced with Biogen Idec results from a study focused on identifying novel drug targets for the one-third of rheumatoid arthritis patients who do not respond to leading anti-TNF therapies.

The study resulted in an experimental and computational approach for researchers to integrate clinical, molecular and genetic data into models of disease progression and drug response. This approach helped predict individual patients’ clinical responses to the shutting down of specific pathways, suggesting that accurate determinations can be made about patients’ responses to existing drugs as well as the inhibition of novel targets and pathways based on DNA and gene expression data fro