Arthritis Society Canada has awarded $450,000 to a UM researcher for a project aiming to help patients and physicians better understand rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Dr. Liam O'Neil, assistant professor of internal medicine at the Max Rady College of Medicine, said RA affects about one in 100 people in Canada.
His team has discovered a protein modification in RA that could help better understand the origins of the disease and why it starts in certain patients.
"What we found in our lab is that this modification appears to affect the activity of certain enzymes. When we induce this modification on these enzymes, they become more active and more stable," he said.
"We think the activity may be why certain patients develop joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis. Surprisingly, this modification may influence joint damage, but it also might lead to autoimmunity itself."
Study may 'change how we think about RA'
Part of the three-year strategic operating grant will allow O'Neil's team to use laboratory tools to expand on their observations, associate them with patient outcomes and study them in a mouse model.
They will also be working with a biobank of blood samples from RA patients and their relatives that have been collected over the last few years.
"We have a number of participants that donated their samples and then subsequently developed rheumatoid arthritis over the course of a few years. We collected many of these samples with the intention of understanding what happens before the disease starts and after it has been established," O'Neil said.
"This work could change how we think about RA and lead to new medicines that prevent joint damage by targeting these altered proteins."
O'Neil joined UM in 2020 and works closely with Dr. Hani El-Gabalawy, an internal medicine professor who also works in RA research. Their team includes two master's students and two research technicians, and they are looking at bringing on more student support this summer.
