Gene therapy for arthritis 1996-1999

Gene therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a relatively novel therapeutic concept. At present, two clinical trials are ongoing which evaluate the safety of ex vivo gene transfer into synoviocytes. However, it is anticipated that the number of clinical trials evaluating anti-inflammatory gene transfer strategies will increase significantly within the near future. This review summarises the pertinent patent situation for arthritis gene therapy from 1996 to 1999. A patent search with the keywords arthritis and gene therapy revealed 65 patent filings during this time period. In this report, we describe and discuss a selection of patent applications filed for novel therapeutic strategies, enabling gene delivery, and expression systems into relevant cell populations (e.g., synoviocytes, chondrocytes and mesenchymal stem cells). For the future, we envision that gene discovery efforts in connection with functional genomics will provide a wealth of novel patentable information hopefully leading to innovative gene therapy approaches for rheumatic diseases.