Rheumatoid arthritis therapy: advances from bench to bedside.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with significant functional disability and morbidity. Treatment with conventional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs has substantial limitations including partial efficacy and poor tolerability. Advances in our understanding of the pathogenesis of RA over the past decade have fostered development of targeted therapies and greatly expanded the available treatment options. Several of the therapeutic targets identified by recent studies have been translated into effective therapeutic agents, and many additional agents are currently under active development. In this article, we review the biologic agents that have made successful transitions from bench to bedside as well as the biologic and small molecule agents that are at various stages of development in human trials.