Patent ID: 7435548

Claim:
A method for identifying two or more genes that are regulated in response to a drug used to treat inflammatory disease, comprising: a) identifying two 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 two or more genes 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 genes of ii) is associated with the inflammatory disease; b) obtaining a gene expression profile for two or more informative genes 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 two or more informative genes to a reference expression profile for the two or more informative genes 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 genes that are regulated in response to a drug for treating inflammatory disease.