Glasgow secures new experimental research centre for arthritis

The University of Glasgow has been named as an Arthritis Research UK (ARUK) Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre - the first in Scotland. The Centre will recruit local patients to test new and existing drugs and to find new approaches that can predict which treatment works best in individuals. With joint start-up funding of £225,000 over three years from medical research charity Arthritis Research UK and the Scottish Government's Chief Scientist Office, the centre aims to take forward the recent advances in the treatments available for people with arthritis. Principal investigator Professor Iain McInnes said: "Glasgow has a long tradition of excellence in the investigation of arthritis treatments, and we're delighted that the Scottish government has decided to work together with a major medical research charity for the good of Scottish patients. "We want to use our expertise to answer some important questions: to discover how established medicines work and allow us to use them even more effectively; and to find out why people with arthritis are more disposed to developing heart attacks and strokes, and to becoming depressed. Above all we want to try and understand why arthritis happens in the first place. "We aim to use current medicines as 'molecular scalpels' to find out more about disease, and with that new knowledge make treatment better.