Oncimmune Holdings (AIM:ONC ) highlighted this morning that researchers from the group’s ImmunoINSIGHTS business, have contributed "world-class science” to Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its early detection.

ImmunoINSIGHTS, the group’s autoantibody profiling technology and service business, works alongside therapy developers to generate insights for their drug development programmes.

The global immunodiagnostics group said this morning that its ImmunoINSIGHTS team was central to a paper published in the journal ‘Arthritis Research & Therapy’.

The paper shows potential to improve early RA detection using autoantibodies, which, when combined with appropriate treatment could ‘substantially improve outcomes for patients.’

Shares in Oncimmune Holdings were trading 1.15% higher at 132p on Wednesday morning.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammation with subsequent progressive destruction of joints. Around one third of people stop work because of RA within 2 years of its onset.

Currently, tests for rheumatoid factor and anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA) can only be detected in 70-80% of RA patients, making the disease commonly under-diagnosed.

Led by Oncimmune's Dr Petra Buddle and Dr Hans-Dieter Zucht, a study was set up to assess the diagnostic potential of IgG antibodies in early RA, assessing 411 patients.

The paper concluded from the study that the autoantibody, cTRA2B-IgG, had the potential to improve diagnosis of early-stage rheumatoid arthritis.

"Oncimmune's ImmunoINSIGHTS team have once again contributed world class science to our collective understanding of a disabling disease, moving the needle in a hard to treat condition,” said Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune.

He added, “RA is insidious in onset, often resulting in a diagnosis later in the evolution of the disease; clearly, candidate biomarkers able to identify the disease earlier in the majority of sufferers present a near term opportunity to dramatically improve outcomes.

Whilst we remain steadfast in our commitment to cancer patients - supporting the clinical understanding of autoimmune disease biomarkers better enables us to predict side effects in cancer patients treated with immune modulating drugs - the potential to work with biopharma in autoimmune disease is also a possibility".

Follow News & Updates from Oncimmune Holdings here: