Patent ID: 7244571

Claim:
A method for identifying a gene that is regulated in response to a drug used to treat inflammatory disease, comprising: a) identifying one or more informative genes associated with an inflammatory disease, comprising: i) obtaining tissue cells induced by IL-1β and TNFα to mimic the inflammatory disease; ii) determining the expression level of at least one gene in the cells; iii) comparing the expression level from ii) to the baseline expression levels in cells not induced to mimic the inflammatory disease; and iv) identifying a difference in expression level in cells induced to mimic the inflammatory disease versus cells that do not mimic the inflammatory disease, such difference indicating the gene of ii) is associated with the inflammatory disease; b) obtaining a gene expression profile for at least one informative gene identified in a) in a tissue cell induced by IL-1β and TNFα to mimic a pro-inflammatory like state in the presence of a candidate drug; and c) comparing the expression profile of the at least one informative gene to a reference expression profile for the at least one informative gene in a cell induced for the pro-inflammatory like state in the absence of the candidate drug, wherein genes whose expression relative to the reference expression profile is altered by the drug identifies the gene as a gene that is regulated in response to a drug for treating inflammatory disease.