Emerging biotherapies for Sjögren's syndrome

Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune epithelitis. This exocrinopathy is frequently associated with extraglandular complications, and the patients are at risk of developing B cell lymphoma. Given the lack of disease-modifying drugs, and the fact that SS is a quintessential B-cell mediated disease, attention has recently been focused on biotherapies.

Despite negative grounds, TNF-alpha antagonists have been tested in the disease, and proven not be efficient. However, B-cell depleting therapy using anti-CD20 antibodies such as rituximab, which is a chimeric mAb, has shown promise in the field, while anti-CD22 mAb seems to be less active.

New treatments against the B-cell activating factor of the TNF family are about to be tested, or replaced by receptor immunoglobulin decay protein.

B-cell depleting therapies seem promising in SS, but no data are, thus far, available on treatments targeting B-cell activating factor of the TNF family.