El Cunqueiro is researching effective therapies for psoriatic arthritis and scleroderma

Some 16,200 Galicians suffer from psoriatic arthritis. It is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the joints of people with psoriasis, causing swelling, stiffness and pain. There is a good amount medications, but they only work in 30% of patients and are aggressive. They can even cause disability. scleroderma It’s more of a minority. About 750 Galicians suffer from it, but this rheumatic disease with the highest mortality rate and there is no effective treatment. The Translational Rheumatology and Immunology Research Group of the Southern Galicia Health Research Institute (IISGS) and the Rheumatology Service of the University Hospital Complex of Vigo (Chuvi) have “fairly reliable preliminary data” that prompted them to focus on a new therapeutic target. with which they very much hope to cure both diseases.

But not only them. The government research agency and the Eugenio Rodriguez Pascual Foundation also consider their proposal promising. so they decided to financially support their research. The first grant – 80% of which was allocated from European regional development funds – began in September to test it in psoriatic arthritis. The second one started earlier, in January, due to scleroderma. In total they have 225,000 euros, with which they will develop the project over three years. In addition, they enjoy the support of the patient associations Asearpo and Avidepo. Principal investigator Dr. Samuel García Pérez stresses that their collaboration is “essential.”

Key to the projects of this Miguel Servet Fellowship researcher are traffic lights. Several proteins have been shown to be involved in neuronal development. Research by his group and others has also implicated it in processes associated with rheumatic diseases. In fact, last year the Spanish Society of Rheumatology (SER) awarded him the Best Basic Science Research Award for work that opened the door to a possible new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. They found that patients with the disease had lower than normal amounts of semaphorin type 3. By injecting it into mice, they confirmed that they suffered from less severe pathology.

Now they are going to work with type 4 semaphorins, which are found in higher than usual quantities in patients with scleroderma and psoriatic arthritis.

Goals

This is their starting point, and the project they will develop until 2027 proposes two goals. On the one hand, check whether the number of type 4 traffic lights is measured. the development of each case can be predicted. Patient’s prognosis. On the other hand, yes may serve as a therapeutic target.

The project will try to block the production of semaphorin 4. If they succeed, they will check whether they are right and whether the patient’s condition improves.

They won’t test this on humans. They are at a much more initial stage. They will do this in mice and in 3D models of joint tissue. For the latter, a ball or matrix is ​​made in the laboratory in which the various cells present in the joint are mixed. In doing so, they recreate something similar to the structure of the synovial tissue that covers the joint and, when a problem occurs, becomes inflamed and painful.

If the results are satisfactory, the next project, according to Dr. Garcia Perez, would be to develop an antibody with this mission that could be used as an effective treatment for psoriatic arthritis and scleroderma. Yes, indeed. It will still take time for the patient to achieve this goal. At least a decade.

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