Cell-killing cancer therapy shows promise for a devastating autoimmune disorder

Opening a new frontier in fighting autoimmune disease, researchers have successfully treated five lupus patients with a novel cell therapy that turns run-of-the-mill immune cells into specialized hunters of rogue cells helping fuel illness. The patients treated with the new therapy all saw their severe symptoms, including kidney and other organ dysfunction, largely disappear. The results “are phenomenal,” says Betty Diamond, an immunologist and rheumatologist at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research who cares for lupus patients and was not involved in the work. Despite her excitement, she cautions that the approach needs to be tried in many more people with lupus to prove it’s safe and has lasting benefits. The treatment, called chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy, involves isolating T cells—sentries of the immune system—from a patient’s blood and genetically modifying them to seek and destroy other cells that are causing disease. The engineered T cells are then reinfused into the patient. CAR-T therapy was first developed more than a decade ago to treat certain leukemias and lymphomas . In those conditions, the modified T cells target another type of immune cell, B cells, that have turned cancerous. But in lupus, B cells go awry in a different way, making antibodies that attack a person’s own tissue. People with lupus can suffer from kidney failure, heart and lung problems, joint pain, and other complications. The dise...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news