Investigating how DNA changes conferring susceptibility to arthritic diseases alter the number and function of immune cells.

Summary

Over the last 15 years significant progress has been made identifying variants in DNA which predispose people to arthritic diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis and psoriatic arthritis.  The challenge now is to determine how these genetic changes contribute to disease, alter treatment response or determine disease outcome.

This study will investigate how possessing an ‘at risk’ genotype could influence disease in terms of DNA structure, gene regulation, protein expression and cellular function in healthy volunteers. This will provide a better understanding of the important molecules, pathways and cells which are altered by genetic susceptibility variants and how they may result in disease. This study has the potential to identify novel targets for therapy which could lead to drug repositioning or novel therapies being developed.