Together with his brother, Dr. Andrew Issekutz is tackling rheumatoid arthritis head on. This daring duo will stop at nothing to arrest this crippling disease in its tracks.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a mysterious disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks joint tissues causing severe inflammation, pain and damage. No one knows what triggers this auto-immune disease, but Dr. Andrew Issekutz knows how to control it. He has been studying inflammation for more than 25 years at Dalhousie, side-by-side with his brother, Dr. Thomas Issekutz. Their findings have helped develop the current most effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
“In rheumatoid arthritis, a protein called TNF initiates attraction of white blood cells to the joints, where they cause progressive damage,” explains Dr. Andrew Issekutz. He and his brother were among the first to show that neutralizing TNF with antibodies halts the invasion of white blood cells and allows healing. Their discovery spurred drug companies to develop anti-TNF therapy, now the gold standard treatment for severe rheumatoid arthritis, worldwide.
Not satisfied with stopping damage already underway, the Drs. Issekutz are now working on strategies to arrest rheumatoid arthritis in the early stages. “This therapy is based on interfering with sticky molecules white blood cells need to migrate through blood vessels into the joints,” Dr. Andrew Issekutz says. “We’ve found that blocking some of these molecules can reverse or even prevent arthritis from developing.” A pharmaceutical company is now pursuing this discovery towards a drug to be tested in clinical trials.
While essential to fighting infection, inflammation wreaks damage in many diseases other than rheumatoid arthritis, such as asthma, pneumonia, meningitis, multiple sclerosis and lupus. The Drs. Issekutz have now shown that blocking certain sticky molecules can prevent inflammation and wheezing in asthma. These findings are already being applied in clinical trials. Says Dr. Andrew Issekutz: “Our discoveries about inflammation in arthritis may lead the way to a whole new generation of therapies for all kinds of inflammatory diseases.”