The new application of chip technology to transcriptome and proteome analysis of rheumatoid disease

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is one of the complex diseases that showed multiple progression stages. At first, inflammatory response occurs by self-antibodies, and then the proliferation of synoviocytes is abnormally promoted. These synoviocytes invade into articular structures and, finally, articular cartilage is destroyed. To analyze growth-promoting factors in synovial cells from articular tissues of RA, we performed DNA chip analysis and compared the expression pattern of mRNA with that of synoviocytes from osteoarthritis (OA) tissue or normal tissue. The results showed that the expression of many genes, including some novel genes, was upregulated in RA synoviocytes compared with OA synoviocytes or normal synoviocytes. RT-PCR analysis and immunohistochemical analysis showed that some genes and their products were highly distributed in active synoviocytes of articular tissues of RA. Furthermore, we compared the protein chip patterns of RA and OA, and found several markers of RA. These results show the utility of chip technology for analysis of rheumatoid disease.