Arthritis drug BiP in human trials

Prof Gabriel Panayi from King’s College London

A clinical trial of a low-cost therapy that uses the patient’s own immune system to fight rheumatoid arthritis has begun in the UK. And it is hoped the drug may work for osteoarthritis too.

“Using patients’ own immune systems to help protect against the disease is a new approach to treatment for rheumatoid arthritis,” says Dr Valerie Corrigall from King’s College London. “As well as being a very promising therapy, we’ve purposefully designed binding immunoglobulin protein (BiP) to be more cost effective than biologic therapies which work well but are extremely expensive.”

BiP is part of the body’s normal anti-inflammatory response. It is found in the joints of people who have had rheumatoid arthritis for a long time but its quantities are too small to have any impact.
An injection of BiP quickly boosts the patients’ anti-inflammatory response and should reset the immune system to give a long lasting effect.
“If BiP works as we expect then a single dose should be sufficient to put patients into remission for months,” says Prof Gabriel Panayi from King’s College London. “The most important thing is that our patients will have a better quality of life for longer. As a bonus, they should need fewer appointments which will free up valuable healthcare resources.”
Initial results show that BiP may stop osteoclasts (bone eating cells), making it a potential therapy for osteoporosis too but more research is needed to establish this for certain.