The Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Programme (A-TAP) is an exciting new £7M concept funded by the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research. It brings together the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford and seven NHS partners and is supported by our access to over 7million patients.  The initiative is aiming to support and develop novel treatments for arthritis based on the underlying causes of inflammatory disease.

This ambition is facilitated by our innovative new approach to translational inflammation research through our application of unique rigorous signal seeking experimental medicine studies leading to rapid adoption into clinical trials underpinned by novel trial design. The results will help us treat the cause of disease not just their symptoms and help develop a new taxonomy of disease that moves away from a traditional “organ-based, speciality-focussed” approach to a process-driven, pathway-focussed classification for inflammatory diseases.