Health

Dawn of healing for autoimmune diseases

2024-03-27   

At the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology held in San Diego at the end of last year, Dr. Fabian Mueller from the University of Erlangen Nuremberg in Germany reported a set of latest research data: 15 patients with autoimmune diseases regained life after receiving CAR-T cell therapy, with the first group of patients receiving treatment remaining disease-free for over two years. According to a recent report on the website of the British journal Nature, after decades of attempts, this result has raised hopes for the complete cure of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis. For more than 50 years, researchers have been trying to "tame" the cells that cause autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis. Currently, most approved therapies work by suppressing the entire immune response in the body, which typically relieves symptoms but puts patients at a higher risk of infection and cancer. Therefore, scientists have come up with various tricks in an attempt to cure these diseases and ensure a healthy life for people. The CAR-T therapy used by Mueller et al. is one of the pioneers. CAR-T therapy utilizes immune cells called T cells. Researchers first remove T cells from the patient's body and genetically engineer them to produce chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). The resulting CAR-T cells are then reintroduced into the patient's body. As early as 2021, the Mueller team began using this method to treat a 20-year-old female patient with systemic lupus erythematosus. Her condition quickly improved without significant side effects. This is the world's first CAR-T treatment trial for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. In the above study, the team modified T cells taken from patients in vitro to carry antibodies that recognize CD19 protein on "defected" B cells. The results showed that after 44 days of CAR-T cell induction, the patient's antibodies disappeared and the condition improved without any significant side effects. Subsequently, Mueller and others made further efforts to significantly improve the symptoms of 15 patients with autoimmune diseases (8 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, 4 patients with systemic sclerosis, and 3 patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy), or even completely disappear. Professor Carl Junn, a pioneer of CAR-T cell therapy, once published a review article in the journal Cell, stating that although CAR-T cell therapy for lupus erythematosus still requires larger scale research and longer follow-up to confirm, this therapy does have great potential. Coincidentally, scientists from the University of Magdeburg in Germany have also successfully treated myasthenia gravis using CD19 targeted CAR-T cell therapy. According to a report by Nature, CAR-T therapy targets and kills all B cells, but only a small portion of B cells are the culprits of most autoimmune diseases. Columbia University dermatologist Amy Paine wants to find a method that only targets these "black sheep". Pain studied a rare skin disease, mucosal pemphigus vulgaris. This disease is caused by the immune system mistakenly interpreting the human body's own desmoprotein 3 as "foreign"

Edit:GuoGuo Responsible editor:FangZhiYou

Source:people.cn

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