One of the world’s largest scientific conferences in rheumatology, EULAR 2026, happened this month, and among the almost 15,000 attendees this year was Ekaterina Radchenko, Senior Project Manager in Indero. Located in Germany, Ekaterina has spent 18 years working in the clinical research industry on the CRO side.
Indero sat down at EULAR 2026 with several leading European principal investigators in rheumatology, including Dr. Januszeworski, Professor Philip van der Bosch, and Professor Lauren Andreoli. Topics included possible challenges around CRO and site collaboration and how we can avoid those challenges.
Indero also had met with a EULAR executive where we discussed how we could collaborate in our future rheumatology trials.
Ekaterina went to several scientific sessions, attended a scientific session on polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) challenges in diagnostics and treatment, as well as new treatment agents for PMR. She noted it was interesting to expand her knowledge about the current trends and breakthroughs in the treatment of most common rheumatic diseases, like, for example, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, Sjögren’s disease, systemic lupus, and to learn about mechanisms of their early onset to most recent cutting-edge development in their treatments.
Of specific interest, as a part of Indero that operates in both rheumatology and dermatology indications, it was to see how rheumatic diseases interconnect with dermatology diseases in diagnosis and management of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. At EULAR 2026, clinicians collaborated on finding ways to improve treatment and increase patients’ quality of life. There were a lot of dermatologists invited to speak about those two. There were a lot of thought-provoking sessions on, for instance, psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis that were interesting to attend.
EULAR also offered the opportunity to not only hear clinicians’ views, but also to hear firsthand from patients, patients’ families and patient advocacy groups. For example, about women’s health support, and how to keep rheumatic disease activity under control, for example, around pregnancy time or around menopause. There were also sessions on how rheumatic diseases affect younger adults, teens and children: What actually is important for these populations, and how to support them keeping their social life at a desired level. Such sessions put into perspective not only the actual medical treatment of rheumatic diseases, but also mental health aspect of such diseases treatment and served for us as another strong reminder of people for whom we’re doing our job in clinical research.
Scientific innovations talked about at EULAR 206 included bispecific T-cell engagers and CAR T-cell therapies, which offer a shift from chronic immunosuppression therapies to immune system reprogramming. For patients with systemic autoimmune diseases, it means highly likely single-time treatment and would most likely lead to long and potentially completely drug-free remission. It basically means that we may be on the threshold of the new era of treatment of such diseases as systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or Sjögren’s disease, or many, many others.
Working with multinational team in rheumatology studies is always fun; we get to work with representatives of different cultures and languages every day. Our team are all experts in their own area of clinical trial management and experts in rheumatology. That is a great part of working at a niche CRO: Everybody is experienced in rheumatology and is excited about the progress we make in the therapeutic area and bringing new treatments to the patients who need them.
