Advancing Personalized Medicine In Rheumatoid Arthritis

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168627.php

In this article, The University of Alabama at Birmingham are the front runners in trying to create a national database that would identify predictors of effectiveness of certain rheumatoid arthritis treatments. Even though there are treatments available to the public out now, they vary greatly in cost and effectiveness from person to person.
Via a 3.3 million dollar grant, the university will be looking to start up their database soon. The data base, called the Treatment Efficacy and Toxicity in Rheumatoid Arthritis Database (TETRAD) will feature the treatment response data and a stash of DNA and blood cell samples from RA patients that have been treated with various drugs.
One huge positive about the TETRAD is that it will bridge the gap between all major players in the personalized medicine gap for treatment of RA: academic researchers, funding agencies, pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology companies...ect. The ultimate goal of TETRAD according to S. Louis Bridges, the principal investigator for the database, is "to better understand the molecular basis of treatment response and to rapidly accelerate research in RA to allow prediction of which drugs will work best in individual patients." Bridges feels that the next major advancement in the personalization of RA medicine is not to create new drugs, but to increase the efficiency and cost effectiveness of drugs currently available to patient though research and eventually personalization of treatments.