Milan played host to EULAR 2023, the European Congress of Rheumatology May 31st to June 3rd and featured an engaging scientific program and lots of stimulating conversations and meetings.

John H. Stone, MD MPH, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Edward A. Fox Chair in Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital was particularly excited by the discussions about CAR-T cell therapies - an exciting new class of steroid-sparing drugs that are working their way through development at the moment.

“During the course of EULAR it became evident to me that CAR-T cell therapies are going to really revolutionize how we treat diseases that are mediated by B cells - such as lupus nephritis, ANCA-associated vasculitis and a number of other conditions such as pemphigus vulgaris. This new treatment modality is going to have a tremendous impact on clinical rheumatology over the next five years.

If successful, this will provide us with another class of much-needed, steroid-sparing therapies”.

There was also a lot of excitement about the poster that Steritas presented featuring details of the GTI-MD, an abridged clinical outcome assessment for measuring steroid-toxicity. 

Martha N. Stone, CEO of Steritas, was particularly inspired by the conversations with academic investigators who are changing how steroid-toxicity is viewed in clinical settings.

“The GTI has already had a lot of traction with academic investigators who are doing important work to mitigate steroid-toxicity in the clinical setting and they are changing their workflows to monitor patients who are on prednisone.

Now with the GTI-MD - the abridged form of the GTI that we presented in the poster session - we can make the process of changing workflows easier. That has met with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when they found out about our new licensing program that provides credentials to our digital platform for academic researchers.”

Ms Stone continued by discussing how she felt we were about to witness a real inflexion point in the fight against steroid-toxicity.

“Just a year ago, the CEO of one of our clients wondered whether the world was really ready to taper steroids, and now just one year later, that same CEO told me he thought we were at a tipping point, and how glad they were that Steritas was leading the conversation about changing prescribing patterns for the first time since they were introduced 75 years ago."

To learn more about the GTI-MD, click here to watch the webinar.