Genome-wide transcriptional analysis of synovial tissue gene expression associated with the response to anti-TNF therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Synovial biopsies of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients with active disease were obtained prior to anti-TNF therapy. Clinical response to anti-TNF treatment was measured 20 weeks later using the EULAR response criteria. Gene expression profiles of patients responding to anti-TNF therapy were compared to non-responders and several genes were found to be differentially expressed between both groups of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients. Synovial samples were obtained by guided arthroscopy using a 2.7 mm arthroscope from 11 Rheumatoid Arthritis patients starting anti-TNF therapy. Samples were immediately preserved in RNALater at -80ºC until extraction. After total RNA extraction, gene expression profiles for 21,000 genes were obtained using Illumina Sentrix whole genome Beadchips WG6 version 2.