Strong scientific interest in DocTIS’ study at EULAR 2025
The DocTIS study “DocTIS: A Single-Cell RNA-Seq Atlas of Drug Response to Targeted Therapies” was presented on 13 June at the EULAR 2025 Congress in Barcelona, as part of the congress’s session “New Ways of Patient Stratification with Systemic Diseases”. The study was selected from among more than 5,100 abstracts submitted to the 2025 EULAR congress. The presentation attracted around 80 attendees, and the room was notably full, reflecting high interest from the rheumatology community in impactful translational research.
Dr Antonio Julià, head of the Rheumatology Research Group at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), delivered the presentation. This study provides a comprehensive single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) analysis of drug response in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). For this objective, longitudinal blood samples from 184 patients and 8 healthy controls were analysed, generating more than 2 million high-quality single-cell transcriptomes. By examining responses to six types of targeted therapies, the study revealed distinct immune patterns for each disease and identified key differences between patients who responded well to treatment and those who did not. Overall, the study delivers a detailed map of immune mechanisms associated with drug efficacy in these diseases, paving the way for novel and more precise treatment approaches.
Attendees were particularly interested in the study design aspects, understanding how the study balanced responder and non-responder patient groups across different therapies, focusing on variables such as age and sex. Dr Julià explained that the study design placed special emphasis on ensuring well-balanced patient cohorts to guarantee the robustness and clinical relevance of the findings. The access to the results that DoCTIS will enable was particularly well received by researchers as well as representatives from biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies, indicating the high translational value of the data generated by this European project.
Just two days earlier, on the 11th of June, the study received an “EULAR 2025 Abstract Award” in the category Basic and Translational Science. This important recognition by Europe’s leading organisation in rheumatology endorses the DocTIS project’s approach and marks a significant milestone in its mission to develop effective, personalised treatments for patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs).
