Identified unmet research needs of high priority within RA, PSA, AxSpa, SLE and other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases
| Rheumatoid arthritis | The need to better define treatment ‘refractory’ states both phenotypically and molecularly |
| The need to focus on refractory patients in both the study of novel targeted therapies and in the study of existing therapies in novel combinations or sequences | |
| Psoriatic arthritis | Understanding differential therapeutic effects on different clinical domains in PsA such as enthesitis |
| Further evaluation of combination therapies and strategic trials including the use of sequential therapies, controlled withdrawal, the treatment of early disease and the treatment of monoarticular or oligoarticular disease | |
| Ankylosing spondyloarthritis | Understanding the role of the microbiome in disease pathogenesis and potential therapy |
| Understanding disease pathology specifically with regard to why Il-23 inhibition does not improve the disease. | |
| Systemic lupus erythematosus | Improving clinical trial design by reducing heterogeneity of participants, developing new outcome disease activity measures, standardising serological testing and conducting organ-specific trials |
| Consider alternative trial designs including adaptive trials and withdrawal trials | |
| Other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases | Improving clinical trial design, specifically with reducing heterogeneity in disease endotypes and the use of organ-specific outcome measures |
| Identification of predictive biomarkers and the inclusion of patient-reported outcomes of specific manifestations (eg, calcinosis) for clinical trials |
axSpA, axial spondyloarthritis; PsA, psoriatic arthritis; RA, rheumatoid arthritis; SLE, systemic lupus erythematous.