VIDEO: Expert discusses ‘crowded market space’ in RA

There are now actually, I think, five classes of biologic or target study drugs available to treat RA, and a whole host of oral medications as well. So from the standpoint of a pharmaceutical company, it's gotten to be a fairly crowded market space. So I think it's difficult for companies to pursue novel therapies, just looking at that outlook, and difficulty in bringing things to market in that kind of a competitive environment. So I feel like that has dampened and slowed the pace of novel therapies coming into clinic. I have seen some reports at the European Alliance of Rheumatology annual meeting that was just in Milan, Italy, and at last year's ACR, with some early phase studies of novel therapies. But it's probably too soon to really talk about those coming in to develop anytime soon. There are still a lot of strategy trials that is looking at how we can use available conventional synthetic biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs. And for those of you who may not be aware, the targeted synthetic DMARD class is really the JAK kinase inhibitors, and there are three of those marketed in the US. But looking at comparative effectiveness type studies and strategy studies, looking at either the sequence of how those drugs can be used, or perhaps in certain disease subsets, or certain comorbidities, which drug is better than others. And perhaps also, of course, looking at biomarker discovery, and trying to develop precision medicine to help guide the selection of treatments for individual patients. A lot of effort, and that's quite a competitive landscape, globally. But as far as really new therapies, or major changes in the way we treat RA, I think there have not been major advances or anything coming into the pipeline in the next year, for example. But there's a lot of work going on in the field, and I look forward to when we get some of these strategy trials to come out to continue to hone and provide some evidence base around treating special populations with RA.