The anti-arthritic effect of ICM0301B, a new angiogenesis inhibitor, was examined using a type II collagen-induced arthritis model for human arthritis in DBA/1J mice. ICM0301B by s.c. injection (100 mg kg−1 per day) suppressed not only body weight reduction and swelling of limbs but also radiographic changes such as bone lesions. The efficacy of ICM0301B was approximately equal to that of a non-steroidal antiinflammatory drug, indomethacin (1 mg kg−1 per day). As ICM0301B inhibits angiogenesis in a rat aorta organ culture model and growth of human umbilical vain endothelial cells induced by basic fibroblast growth factor, the observed anti-arthritic effect of ICM0301B might be partly attributed to the anti-angiogenic activity.

Human rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory joint disease, which is characterized by proliferation of synoviocytes and massive infiltration of leukocytes.3, 4 For the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids have been used, though their therapeutic effects are not satisfactory. The disease modifying anti-rheumatoid agents has also reported to show therapeutic effects on rheumatoid arthritis by improving the immunological abnormalities of this disease.5, 6, 7 However, disease modifying anti-rheumatoid agents are more or less ineffective in the late phase of the disease and adverse effects often limit their use. Recently, biological drugs such as antibodies against TNF-α and IL-6 have been used for the therapies of rheumatoid arthritis.8, 9, 10 Angiogenesis might be one of targets for the development of antirheumatoid drugs, as angiogenesis is related to the development of rheumatoid arthritis.11, 12 Therefore, we examined the antirheumatoid activity of IMC0301B, an angiogenesis inhibitor using a mouse arthritic model.

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