Five lupus patients who were very ill have been cured by one infusion of modified immunity cells. This small trial borrowed from the FDA. CancerThe therapy uses patients’ own cells to treat the condition.
Scientists PhoneAccording to the researchers, the findings were “spectacular and incredibly exciting” and could lead to a new era in managing autoimmune disease, which, like cancer, can be difficult to treat.
Lupus can be a lifelong condition. It can cause organ damage and disabling joint pain. Most of the womenThe age of conception.
As with many other autoimmune diseases and lupus, the root causes are still unknown. GeneticEnvironmental factors.
Inflammation is one of the symptoms.Commonly, these diseases are treated with immunosuppressive drugs and steroids. These drugs subdue the disease-causing factors but do not completely eliminate them.
However, this could change if the promising results of a recent study by Georg Schett, a rheumatologist at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany, can be replicated to safely “reset” the immune systems of more patients with lupus.
The success of cell-based therapies, called chimeric-antigen receptor (CAR), has inspired T-cell therapies which have produced some remarkable results. Incredible results in blood cancersMethodically, researchers tested the results. It is possible that the same approach could work for lupus. – trialing the therapy first In miceIf so, then in one patientWe have added four more.
CAR-T therapies are a way to take a patient’s immune system and engineer them to destroy cancer cells when they are infused back into the body.
This particular trial was to find out if the therapy could be used to kill faulty B cells. It did so by using CD19, a cell surface protein that is known for producing autoantibodies in people with Lupus. These antibodies mistakenly attach to the cells of the body.
After being given instructions, the immune system rushes in and attacks the tissues. It damages organs, causes joint pain, fatigue, skin rashes, and causes joint pain.
The one-time treatment was able to eliminate the patient’s misguided B cells, without any side effects. After that, disease-causing antibodies were reduced to below detectable levels. Patients also experienced a significant improvement in their symptoms, so that they no longer needed to take the same medications to manage their condition.
Although it is too early to know if the patients will be cured and how many patients with lupus would respond to treatment the results are encouraging.
Fourteen patients (four men and four women) have been in remission now for five to seventeen months. Despite a brief recurrence of B-cells a few months after treatment, the disease has not relapsed.
Crucially, those newly made B cells haven’t churned out the autoantibodies their dysfunctional predecessors did, so the researchers suspect they have indeed succeeded in rebooting the patients’ immune systems – although time will tell.
Schett stated, “We were truly surprised at how effective it was.” Submitted STAT News journalist Isabella Cueto. “I must say that it blew us all away.”
The immune system function was not completely halted. The therapy targeted antibody-producing B cells and preserved immunity to measles (and chickenpox), measles, and rubella.
“This would appear to be the holy-grail of treatment,” Mark Leick (a Massachusetts General Hospital medical oncologist who was not part in the trial), said. SubmittedSTAT News.
The therapy must be evaluated in larger numbers of Lupus patients to determine whether it is effective and if it lasts. CAR-T therapy may cause systemic inflammation, which can be fatal in certain patients with blood cancer. This will need to be monitored by researchers.
Schett’s team has already begun planning another trial in order to see if other autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid or scleroderma might also respond to CAR -T therapy. Scientists have been studying CAR-T therapy for many years. It was speculated that this could be possibleIt is possible, and it appears to be a possibility.
Cost is another obstacle to the treatment, even if it proves to be safe and effective in treating Lupus or other autoimmune disorders.
CAR-T therapies can be tailored to each patient and require special manufacturing capabilities to make the modified immune cells. It might not be possible to use CAR–T therapies for severe lupus patients who aren’t responding to other treatments.
The study was published in Nature Medicine.
