HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Sept. 15, 2022 (HealthDay News) — While there’s no cure for lupus and treatments don’t work for many of the 1.5 million people who live with the disease in the United States, a new study shows a cancer therapy may kick hard-to-treat lupus into remission.
Lupus is an Autoimmune disease that occurs when the body’s immune system engages in friendly fire against its own skin, joints, bones, kidneys and heart, triggering a host of symptoms.
Try CAR-T therapy.
The therapy is used to treat certain types and types of cancer. It takes your body’s T-cells and trains them in the laboratory to recognize specific cells. Finally, it infuses them back into your body to continue their work. The therapy is directed at CD19, a protein found on B cells, in lupus.
The small study included five people with severe lupus involving multiple organs — such as the kidneys, heart, lungs and joints — who hadn’t responded to standard therapy.
Patients showed improvement in their symptoms after three months of one treatment. This included a remission or elimination of any organ involvement, and the disappearance or reduction of disease-related antibodies. What’s more, they didn’t need any additional treatments. Similar results were reported in the journal for a person suffering from Lupus. New England Journal of MedicineIn 2021.
“Severe [lupus]CAR-T cells treatment can make her very sensitive. [people] can go into longstanding drug-free remission,” said study author Dr. Georg Schett. He is vice president of research and chair of the department of internal medicine at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.
He said that side effects from the new study were not severe. This therapy can cause high fever, chills, difficulty breathing, and cytokine-release syndrome in cancer patients. These are caused by CAR-T cells increasing and releasing large amounts of inflammatory chemicals into the bloodstream.
Researchers are now trying to determine if this is possible. immune systemIt has undergone a profound reset and now behaves normal going forward.
“Longer monitoring of patients will be important to test whether they enjoy long-term disease-free remission and are eventually cured from [lupus],” Schett said.
He believes that this treatment might be available sooner than anticipated. “CAR-T cell therapy is already established in cancer medicine, particularly to treat lymphoma and leukemia,” Schett noted.
The journal published the study Sept. 15. Nature Medicine .
Experts in Lupus said they were thrilled by the new findings.
“This is a very, very big deal,” said Hoang Nguyen, senior scientific program manager at the Lupus Research Alliance. Her organization supported initial research into CAR-T in a mouse model with Lupus.
“There is no real cure for lupus, and the effectiveness of current therapies is limited,” said Nguyen. “This is the first time that a treatment eliminated lupus symptoms in all treated subjects in a 100-day study.”
She warned that the trial involved only five participants and that not enough information is available on the long-term results.
Jill Buyon, MD, is the director of NYU Langone’s Lupus Center in New York City. “Patients got better with regard to multiple symptoms and didn’t require other therapies, including steroids. She said that more studies are needed in larger numbers of Lupus patients who are being followed for longer periods. However, this is very exciting.
And according to Dr. Ruth Fernandez Ruiz, a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, “[Lupus]Patients experienced remarkable clinical improvement following CAR-T cell treatment and clinical remission even though they were not receiving the therapy. [the]Drugs for the duration of CAR-T cell treatment follow-up. Even though the study is small, it is possible that CAR–T cell therapy can be used in some way. [lupus]This is especially important for patients suffering from severe and refractory diseases. [resistant]To standard-of care treatments
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The Lupus Foundation of America offers more information about lupus treatments.
SOURCES: Georg Schett, MD, vice president, research, chair, department of internal medicine, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany; Jill Buyon, MD, rheumatologist, director, Lupus Center, NYU Langone, New York City; Hoang Nguyen, PhD, senior scientific program manager, Lupus Research Alliance, New York City; Ruth Fernandez Ruiz, MD, rheumatologist, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York City; Nature Medicine, Sept. 15, 2022
