Mass Spectrometric Characterization of Apheresis Samples from Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients - Approaching the Principles of Function of Immunomodulation Therapy.

摘要

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common autoimmune disease affecting about 1percent of the population, leads to substantial disability and loss of productivity by chronic joint inflammation and subsequent progressive destruction of the articular tissue (1,2). There are several stages of treatment available encompassing analgesics as basic therapeutics, disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), and TNF alpha inhibitors (3). However, as not all patients are responding to these treatments, there is a need for alternative therapies. One alternative is apheresis treatment using PROSORBA~R columns (4,5) attempting to deplete/modulate disease-related proteins. Recently, also therapeutically induced B-cell depletion has emerged (6). Here we describe the mass spectrometric characterization of apheresis samples as an approach to understand the principles of function of immunomodulation therapy.