Hello again! As Senior Medical Science Liaison in the Medical Affairs department at Crescendo Bioscience, one of my responsibilities is to attend medical meetings, where, in addition to presenting some of our latest data, I meet with international key opinion leaders and stay abreast of the science around RA. In my last post, I brought you up to speed on the Vectra studies that were presented the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Annual Congress, which took place this year in Madrid, from June 14 – 17, with more than 16,000 people from 120 countries in attendance. In this post, I’d like to share some additional research I gathered while attending this year’s EULAR meeting.
In addition to supporting the presentation of our studies and attending various meetings, I made sure that I had a chance to catch up on other news in the field by attending different scientific sessions. One of the big topics at this year’s meeting was stomach bacteria and its role in the development of autoimmune diseases, which potentially represents a new approach to the treatment of autoimmune disease.
There was also an interesting debate in one session about whether newer sensitive measures, such as US, MRI, and Vectra, should be included in the definition of RA remission. While the discussion included both pros and cons, there was an overall feeling that there is a role for these measures, but that it is still early.
Another discussion was around the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) willingness to consider MRI as an endpoint for trials in RA. MRI can detect changes in joints earlier compared to x-ray. For patients, this translates into the possibility that studies might take place with smaller numbers of patients on shorter time frames, potentially resulting in new medicines getting to patients faster.
Crescendo Bioscience activities
While on site, my colleagues and I had the chance to meet with investigators from around the world who are involved in research related to Vectra. At our bi-annual Scientific Advisory Board meeting, there was a lot of discussion and excitement about how we hope to develop Vectra even further. We also had interesting meetings with several pharmaceutical companies and met with several of our [academic] partners about opportunities for future collaborations.
Along with the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) annual meeting, which will take place November 3-8 in San Diego, EULAR is one of the most important international medical meetings on rheumatic diseases and also includes musculoskeletal diseases. I love going every year and feel so inspired by the advances being made across the field for RA patients.
Full abstracts of these and all EULAR presentations are available at this link.
