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Professor Thomas’s team from the University of Queensland Frazer Institute has received a $11.5 million grant through the Frontier Health and Medical Research initiative to allow the Reset Rheumatoid Arthritis project to move to the next phase.
Professor Thomas said the funding will allow the team to prepare for clinical trials of ASITI-RA, an antigen-specific immunotherapy they have developed to reprogram the immune system to sustain long-term remission in RA.
“Within two years, we expect to be able to start Phase 1 clinical trials of the immunotherapy, which aims to reduce the need for lifelong immunosuppression.
“It would transform patient’s lives and reduce the economic burden associated with RA.”
The debilitating autoimmune disease affects 1% of Australians and caused 1300 deaths in 2022, with the disease disproportionately affecting women.
Just under $1 billion a year is spent in Australia on treatment and Professor Thomas says that the cost of treating RA is projected to rise to $1.5 billion in five years because an ageing population means that diagnoses are expected to increase 1.5 times in that time.
“If you have RA it increases your risk of dying from heart attack or stroke by 50%,” she said.
“The problem is that we don’t have enough specialists to handle complex care [of RA], so we need a paradigm shift in how we treat the condition.”
In early-phase human clinical trials conducted by Professor Thomas’ team, participants in two of the dose groups entered disease remission within eight weeks.
“We learned from this trial that there is a dosing sweet spot, which will be helpful for our next trial,” Professor Thomas said.
“But one of our most exciting findings was the patient’s disease-specific antibodies also changed, which doesn’t occur in response to current therapies.”
“Based on our results, this funding provides a world-first opportunity to leverage these learnings, and to progress our new immunotherapy to trial to interrupt the disease process and achieve safe treatment withdrawal.
“Immunotherapies like this might also be used to prevent the onset of RA in people at high risk, and in people recently diagnosed with othe autoimmune disorders like Type 1 diabetes.
Partners on the project include The University of Sydney, Monash University, King’s College London, Macquarie University, Newcastle University, Leiden University Medical Center, Flinders University, Metro South Hospital and Health Service, Arthritis Australia, Arthritis Queensland, The CLEARbridge Foundation,Southern Adelaide Local Health Network, Translational Research Institute and the Australian Rheumatology Association, with support from UniQuest for commercialisation.
