Biomarkers of Musculoskeletal Diseases: diagnosis & treatment of arthritis

目前还没有生物标志物可以明确地诊断关节炎或衡量许多不同治疗方法的有效性，这些方法可以帮助减缓疾病的进展，从而提高患者的生活质量。事实上，目前还没有办法诊断和区分早期类风湿关节炎和早期骨关节炎；如果后一点能够实现，世界上大多数国家的国家卫生保健提供者将节省大量费用。本提案的目的是评估一组生物标志物测定的能力，以检测血液、关节液和尿液中不同类型的组织分解或合成产物，这些检测在医学上具有良好特征的具有不同进展阶段和关节炎疾病类型的患者群体中大量存在。然后将对这些数据进行分析，找出这些物质的不同表达模式，以便确定其发生的具体特征，可用于临床试验，诊断不同的疾病亚型，并监测不同治疗策略的益处。在MRC的资助下，这些检测方法被开发和验证后，这些技术将被转移给一个工业合作伙伴，这样它们就可以在商业上提供给医院和研究机构，用于临床诊断和治疗监测，以及用于治疗关节炎疾病的新药发现计划。

At present there are no biomarkers available that can definatively diagnose arthritis or measure the usefulness of many different treatment approaches that are available to help slow the progression of the disease and thereby improve the quality of life of the patient. Indeed, at present there are no means available to diagnose and distinguish between early stage rheumatoid arthtritis and early stage osteoarthritis; if this latter point could be achieved there would be substantial costs savings to the national health care providers in most countries worldwide. The objective of this proposal is to evaluate the capabilities of a panel of biomarker assays to detect different types of tissue breakdown or synthesis products in the blood, joint fluid and urine in large numbers of a medically well-characterised groups of patients with different stages in the progression and types of arthritic disease. These data will then be analysed for different patterns of expression of these substances with a view to identifying specific fingerprints of their occurrance that can be used in clinical trials, to diagnose different disease subtypes and also monitor the benefits of different treatment strategies. After these assays have been developed and validated using MRC funding these technologies will be transferred to an industrial partner so that they can become commercially available to hospitals and research institutions for use in clinical diagnosis and monitoring of treatments as well as for new drug discovery initiatives for treatment of arthritic diseases.