Technological advances over the past decade have revolutionized many areas of rheumatology, ranging from diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic development to the mechanistic understanding of rheumatic diseases. This overview highlights key technological innovations and discusses the major impact that these developments are having on research and clinical practice.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Maecker, H. T. et al. New tools for classification and monitoring of autoimmune diseases. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 8, 317–328 (2012).
Sokolove, J., Lindstrom, T. M. & Robinson, W. H. Development and deployment of antigen arrays for investigation of B-cell fine specificity in autoimmune disease. Front. Biosci. (Elite Ed.) 4, 320–330 (2012).
Robinson, W. H. Sequencing the functional antibody repertoire—diagnostic and therapeutic discovery. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 11, 171–182 (2015).
Han, A., Glanville, J., Hansmann, L. & Davis, M. M. Linking T-cell receptor sequence to functional phenotype at the single-cell level. Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 684–692 (2014).
Macosko, E. Z. et al. Highly parallel genome-wide expression profiling of individual cells using nanoliter droplets. Cell 161, 1202–1214 (2015).
Buenrostro, J. D., Giresi, P. G., Zaba, L. C., Chang, H. Y. & Greenleaf, W. J. Transposition of native chromatin for fast and sensitive epigenomic profiling of open chromatin, DNA-binding proteins and nucleosome position. Nat. Methods 10, 1213–1218 (2013).
Bendall, S. C., Nolan, G. P., Roederer, M. & Chattopadhyay, P. K. A deep profiler's guide to cytometry. Trends Immunol. 33, 323–332 (2012).
Filippucci, E., Di Geso, L. & Grassi, W. Progress in imaging in rheumatology. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 10, 628–634 (2014).
Diekman, B. O. & Guilak, F. Stem cell-based therapies for osteoarthritis: challenges and opportunities. Curr. Opin. Rheumatol. 25, 119–126 (2013).
Chen, R. et al. Personal omics profiling reveals dynamic molecular and medical phenotypes. Cell 148, 1293–1307 (2012).
Acknowledgements
The authors' work is supported by grants from the NIH NHLBI Proteomics Center (N01-HV-00242), NIH NIAMS (R01 AR063676), NIH NIAID (U01 AI101981, U01 AI057229, U19 AI110491), NIH NCI (R33 CA183659), and NIH NIAMS/NIAID/FNIH AMP Program (UH2 AR067681), and by the Brennan Family, the Northern California Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation (NCCAF) Center of Excellence, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
W.H.R. declares that he is a member of the Board of Directors, consultant for, and owner of equity in Atreca, Inc. R.M. declares no competing interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Figure 1
Advanced technologies that are transforming rheumatology. (PPTX 1816 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Robinson, W., Mao, R. Technological advances transforming rheumatology. Nat Rev Rheumatol 11, 626–628 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2015.137
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2015.137
This article is cited by
-
25 years of biologic DMARDs in rheumatology
Nature Reviews Rheumatology (2023)
-
Could Lymphocyte Profiling be Useful to Diagnose Systemic Autoimmune Diseases?
Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology (2017)
