Which rheumatoid arthritis drug works for me?

Project Summary

Rheumatoid arthritis patients have to go through a series of drugs before finding one that works for them. While trying out firstline drugs such as methotrexate, many patients experience a series of debilitating side-effects, such as nausea, fatigue, and infections, causing them to discontinue their usage. Currently, there are limited tests available to tell a patient whether a drug will work for them, which could potentially save them time, money, and prevent a painful experience. Tools such as single-cell RNA sequencing provide high-resolution snapshots into the behavior of many different immune cells in a person’s blood. By combining single-cell immune profiling and at-home capillary blood self-collection, we are looking to understand why first line of defense drugs work for some people and not others. For a behind-the-scenes view of how we made this study happen, check out our blog on Medium!

Project Length	6-8 weeks
Goal	Our primary goal is to collect samples from rheumatoid arthritis patients starting a firstline therapy and use their high-resolution immune profiles to predict responders and non-responders. Our secondary goal is to track these patients before, during, and after their drug regimen to more precisely characterize why the drug is failing to work and why some patients experience more severe side-effects than others.
Research Type	Exploratory Research, Pre-clinical research
Research Team	ImYoo Inc San Francisco, USA Tatyana Dobreva, PhD H-Index: 8 Lead Researcher David Brown, PhD H-Index: 6 Lead Researcher