Disclaimer: I am a full-time employee of Bristol Myers Squibb.
When I practiced clinical rheumatology, I would often see patients with autoimmune conditions like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), systemic sclerosis (scleroderma), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), or myositis. A typical patient journey included an initial sense of relief when a diagnosis was established and a medicine was started. Inevitably, however, there was a sense of dread when a patient would ask: “When am I able to stop taking these strong immunosuppressive medicines?”
I would answer: “Likely never.”
That’s because, historically, there have been no cures for these diseases.
Now, however, I believe there may be an opportunity for new strategies that may deliver transformational outcomes for patients. In a new review paper published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (NRDD) (link here), our team at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), led by Dr. Francisco Ramírez-Valle, describes a “sequential immunotherapy” strategy that has the goal of achieving durable remissions and even functional cures. I presented an example of this strategy in action for SLE at the Stanford Drug Discovery Symposium. I also discussed the potential for functional cures during a recent BioCentury Show podcast and as part of NRDD’s “An Audience With” series.…