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The papers brought together in this supplement of the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases constitute summaries of presentations at the Fourth International Symposium on Advances in Targeted Therapies which was held in April/May 2002. As such, these presentations represent the state of the art on the biology of mechanisms of action and pathophysiology of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin (IL1) as well as other important mediators of inflammation. Current knowledge on the means and consequences of blocking TNF, IL1, or other molecules is presented as well.
We are grateful to Drs Crofford, Feldmann, …
Footnotes
↵* The conference was organised under the sole responsibility of the departments of the Universities of Erlangen, Leiden, and Vienna in collaboration with an advisory board consisting of the above-mentioned colleagues from departments of rheumatology of several American and European Universities. The following companies provided unrestricted educational grants for the organisation of this conference: Abbott Immunology, Amgen (Europe AG), Centocor, Immunex, Pharmacia, Schering-Plough, and Wyeth Ayerst. The pharmaceutical industry had no part in the decisions about the specific programme and, with the exception of few observers, participants were selected and solely invited by the organising committee. Several members of the advisory board and the members of the organising committee have obtained experience in the use of TNF blocking compounds in the course of their participation in clinical studies on these agents (for which the costs were defrayed by industry).