Leland Stanford Junior University

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research

University Health Network

Ellipsis Biotherapeutics Corporation

Kathy Siminovitch

Eric Lander

Omar D Perez

Thomas J Hudson

Mark Daly

John Rioux

Edward Keystone

Eleanor Fish

Carole Galligan

Vivian Bykerk

The invention provides a novel cell that is a precursor of a fibroblast-like synovial cell. The novel cell is a circulating synovial tissue cell that stains positive for collagen, CD34, CD45, prolyl 4-hydroxylase and CD14. The invention also relates to methods of diagnosing or monitoring rheumatoid arthritis and/or osteoarthritis using gene expression profiles, protein expression profiles, and/or protein phosphorylation profiles of different cell types, including the novel precursor, CD3+ cells, synovial tissue fibroblast-like synovial cells and fibrocytes. The invention also includes methods to identify substances to treat or prevent rheumatoid arthritis and/or osteoarthritis.

Methods of diagnosing and treating rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis

The invention provides nucleic acid segments of the human genome, particularly nucleic acid segments from a gene, including polymorphic sites. Allele-specific primers and probes hybridizing to regions flanking or containing these sites are also provided. The nucleic acids, primers and probes are used in applications such as phenotype correlations, forensics, paternity testing, medicine and genetic analysis.

Crohn's disease-related polymorphisms

Growing community of inventors

Toronto, Canada

Kathy Siminovitch