In light of the recent emergence of new therapeutics for rheumatoid arthritis, 
such as kinase inhibitors and biosimilars, a new nomenclature for 
disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), which are currently often 
classified as synthetic (or chemical) DMARDs (sDMARDS) and biological DMARDs 
(bDMARDs), may be needed. We propose to divide the latter into biological 
original and biosimilar DMARDs (boDMARDs and bsDMARDs, respectively, such as 
abatacept, adalimumab, anakinra, certolizumab pegol, etanercept, golimumab, 
infliximab, rituximab or tocilizumab, but also emerging ones like clazakizumab, 
ixekizumab, sarilumab, secukinumab or sirukumab) and the former into 
conventional synthetic and targeted synthetic DMARDs (csDMARDs and tsDMARDs, 
respectively). tsDMARDs would then constitute only those that were specifically 
developed to target a particular molecular structure (such as tofacitinib, 
fostamatinib, baricitinib or apremilast, or agents not focused primarily on 
rheumatic diseases, such as imatinib or ibrutinib), while csDMARDs would 
comprise the traditional drugs (such as methotrexate, sulfasalazine, 
leflunomide, hydroxychloroquine, gold salts and others). The proposed 
nomenclature may provide means to group and distinguish the different types of 
DMARDs in clinical studies and review articles.