The Innovative Therapies in Autoimmune Diseases conference took place on March 8-10, 2001 in San Francisco. This conference was sponsored by the American College of Rheumatology in cooperation with the Arthritis Foundation, the NIH Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and the Food and Drug Administration. The conference was chaired by Lee Simon, M.D. of Beth Israel Medical Center and Kent Johnson, M.D. of the Federal Drug Administration. Support for the conference was provided by a number of pharma companies including Aventis, Amgen, Pharmacia, Wyeth-Ayerst/Immunex, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Centocor, LaJolla Pharmaceutical, Merck & Co., Procter & Gamble, AstraZeneca, Daiichi, Genzyme and Genelabs and Watson.
A summary of selected highlights from the conference are presented here. This summary was prepared by the Co-Director of the Hopkins Arthritis WebSite, Joan M. Bathon, M.D., and by Marilyn Towns, B.S., research coordinator at Johns Hopkins.
Clinical Development Challenges
Peter Lipsky, M.D. from the National Institutes of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases discussed
CD40/CTLA4/CD40 Ligand Coactivation Signaling.
Iain McInnis, MRCP, PhD from the University of Glasgow spoke on
Targeting Novel Pathways that Regulate TNF-aProduction.
Gerd R. Burmester, M.D. from Charite-Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany spoke on
Bone Morphogenic Proteins (BMPs).
Access to Therapies: Bench to Patient to Society
M.D.David Wofsy, M.D. from the University of California - San Francisco presented a summary of the report of
the American College of Rheumatology Blue Ribbon Committee on New Therapies..
Mr. Kevin Brennan of the Arthritis Foundations Office of Public Policy and Advocacy discussed the AFs programs to advocate for
Access to Therapies.
Dorothy McCabe, Ph.D., of Amgen, Inc. discussed the
Cost of New Development of New RA Drugs.
David Henry, M.D., Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Training in Pharmacology and Rational Drug Use, at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia discussed
Drug Reimbursement.
Drummond Rennie, M.D. of the Institutes of Health Policy Studies at University of California, San Francisco discussed
The Reporting of Pharmaco-Economic Analysis.
Clinical Drug Development Challenges in Osteoarthritis
Theodore Pincus, M.D. from Vanderbilt University Medical Center discussed
Reassessing the Efficacy of Acetaminophen in Osteoarthritis.
Roland W. Moskowitz, M.D. from Case Western Reserve discussed
Glucosamine.
Late-Breaking Abstracts
Jean-Claude Becker, M.D., et al.
A Multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled study to evaluate the safety and preliminary clinical activity of multiple doses of CTLA4Ig and LEA29Y administered intravenously to subjects with rheumatoid arthritis.
Richard Furie, M.D., et al.
A Single Dose, Placebo-Controlled Double-Blind, Phase I Study of Humanized AntiC-5 Antibody h5G1.1 In Patients with Systemic Erythematosus
J. Peterson, Ph.D., et al.
An Extended Phase I/II Study of a Novel Non-Depleting Fully Human Anti-CD4 Monoclonal Antibody (HuMax CD4) in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Treated with Methotrexate
