Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease that primarily affects the joints, with the main clinical manifestations being chronic, symmetrical, and peripheral multi-joint inflammatory lesions. Drugs, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), glucocorticoids (GCs), disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), and biologics play a very important role in the treatment of RA. Of these, the most commonly used are chemical drugs, such as NSAIDs, GCs, and DMARDs. In recent years, a number of new compounds have emerged for the treatment of RA, such as SYK inhibitors, JAK inhibitors, NSAID-CAI drugs, and Syk/PDGFR-α/c-Kit inhibitors. In this review, we summarize the most recently developed anti-RA chemical drugs and discuss the synthesis and biological activities of these various new compounds.
Keywords: Biological activities; Chemical drugs; Rheumatoid arthritis; Synthesis.