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Editorial
. 2025 Jul 14;27(1):148.
doi: 10.1186/s13075-025-03618-4.

Killing arthritogenic fibroblast-like synoviocytes: an example using cytotoxic aptamers binding nucleolin

George D Kalliolias  1 , Efthimia K Basdra  1 , Athanasios G Papavassiliou  2
Affiliations
Editorial

Killing arthritogenic fibroblast-like synoviocytes: an example using cytotoxic aptamers binding nucleolin

George D Kalliolias et al. Arthritis Res Ther. .

Abstract

"Pauci-immune" and "fibroblast-rich" synovial pathotypes are predictors of resistance to multi-drug immunosuppression. For these "difficult-to-treat" (D2T) endotypes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), depletion of arthritogenic fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) has emerged as promising treatment strategy. Profiling at a single-cell level has enabled the molecular characterization of distinct subpopulations of arthritogenic FLS. Advances in molecular engineering have empowered the development of multiple modalities (anti-FLS antibodies, T-cell engagers, cytotoxic cells with chimeric receptors recognizing FLS-specific antigens) to achieve depletion of arthritogenic subpopulations of FLS with unprecedented selectivity. A recently published study highlighted in this article, adds apoptosis-promoting aptamers in the armamentarium of the FLS-killing pipeline.

Keywords: Aptamers; Fibroblast-like synoviocytes; Nucleolin; Rheumatoid arthritis; Treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Consent for publication: All authors agreed to the publication of this manuscript. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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