Dr Grace C. Wright on the Need for Targeted Therapies in RA

Despite the number of available drugs for treating rheumatoid arthritis, many patients still have untreated symptoms, according to Grace C. Wright, MD, PhD, clinical associate professor of medicine and attending rheumatologist at New York University Langone Medical Center. Therapy regimens could be tailored more efficiently if tests helped to predict which individual patients are most likely to respond to a medication.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What do you think are currently the main challenges in rheumatoid arthritis treatment?

A lot of difficulties exist still in treating patients despite the number of drugs that we have. And partly it’s because we have symptoms that patients have that many of our drugs don’t effectively treat. So patients can go through 6, 7 agents and still have untreated symptoms. Clearly, clearly, we’re missing things that we need to have: better choices, better options, and better ways to tailor treatment for individual patients.

What are some developments you would like to see in rheumatoid arthritis medication?

It would be nice if we could tailor directly for the patient, so if we had a test that helped us to predict which patient would respond to a certain type or a class of medicine, then a lot of the shopping that we have to do, we could sort of cut that time down and really get patients back to function quickly. So, tailoring therapy, getting targeted treatments, that’s a key need.