# Causes and Roles of Hypercitrullination in Preclinical Rheumatoid Arthritis

> **NIH NIH R01** · BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL · 2020 · $407,352

## Abstract

Project Summary
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects up to 1-2% of the general population in North America. The cause of RA is
still not fully understood but involves complicate interactions between genes and environment. As more
effective therapies for RA are emerging, the focus of RA care is shifting from controlling inflammation to early
detection, prevention, and cure of this disease. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand how the
disease process of RA is initiated. Preliminary data of this study suggest that blood cells obtained from healthy
first-degree relatives (FDRs) of RA patients already display several abnormal features that are also seen in
untreated RA patients, indicating that those abnormal features predate the clinical symptoms of RA. The first
aim of this project is to use biochemical approaches to characterize those abnormal features in blood cells
from FDRs, and to establish a chronological and causal relationship among those features. The second aim is
to use pharmacological and genetic approaches to examine how the cascade of the abnormal features is
triggered and how one feature leads to the next. The final aim is to examining blood cells obtained from newly
diagnosed RA patients before and after treatments in order to determine if effective RA treatment will mitigate
these abnormal features. Taken together, this project will delineate a sequence of molecular events leading to
the development of clinical symptoms of RA and will bring us one step closer to the initial trigger of RA.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9980794
- **Project number:** 5R01AR070171-04
- **Recipient organization:** BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** I-CHENG HO
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $407,352
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-12 → 2022-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9980794

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9980794, Causes and Roles of Hypercitrullination in Preclinical Rheumatoid Arthritis (5R01AR070171-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9980794. Licensed CC0.

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