Roche has been invited to participate in the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) and present its latest data regarding treatments for rheumatoid arthritis and other severe autoimmune diseases. The meeting will be held between June 10 and 13, in Rome, Italy.
Roche will present data from the RoACTEMRA and MabThera trials for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and has already announced in a press release ahead of the presentation that the novel therapies may offer significant improvements for patients suffering from these conditions. According to Roche, the data will reveal the company’s commitment to the treatment of autoimmune diseases, as well as the depth and breadth of the medical options they are currently developing.
“People with rheumatological conditions have relied on our medicines for more than a decade, and we are committed to developing treatments for other debilitating autoimmune diseases,” stated Sandra Horning, MD, the head of Global Product Development and chief medical officer at Roche. “We are proud to apply our insights into the biology of inflammation to conditions where patients have inadequate, or no currently approved, treatment options.”
Roche has also announced that it will be hosting 40 data presentations, including studies from seven different autoimmune diseases. The company will present new results from RoACTEMRA in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis and systemic sclerosis (SSc), which is a life-threatening condition with severe lack of therapeutic options, as well as its studies on systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA), which is a serious type of pediatric arthritis children, and on other rare diseases characterized by inflammation of blood vessels.
The company has recently studied, in collaboration with researchers from University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, in Germany, the anti-inflammatory potential and antiarthritic effects of combined TNFα and IL-17 inhibition (a proinflammatory cytokine), using human primary mesenchymal cells. The study revealed that the combination of cytokine inhibitors was effective as a potential treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
In addition to the treatments for arthritis, the Roche Group also holds other immunology medicines in its portfolio, including MabThera/Rituxan (rituximab) and ACTEMRA/RoACTEMRA (tocilizumab), XOLAIR (omalizumab) for asthma, Pulmozyme (dornase alfa) for cystic fibrosis, Esbriet (pirfenidone) for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and MabThera for certain types of small-vessel vasculitis. The company is now also studying etrolizumab for ulcerative colitis, and lebrikizumab for severe asthma.
