autoimmune disease

3 Articles

Hacking T Cells To Treat Celiac Disease

June 11, 2025 by 14 Comments

As there is no cure for celiac disease, people must stick to a gluten free diet to remain symptom-free. While this has become easier in recent years, scientists have found some promising results in mice for disabling the disease. [via ScienceAlert]

Since celiac is an auto-immune disorder, finding ways to alter the immune response to gluten is one area of investigation to alleviate the symptoms of the disease. Using a so-called “inverse vaccine,” researchers “engineered regulatory T cells (eTregs) modified to orthotopically express T cell receptors specific to gluten peptides could quiet gluten-reactive effector T cells.”

The reason these are called “inverse vaccines” is that, unlike a traditional vaccine that turns up the immune response to a given stimuli, this does the opposite. When the scientists tried the technique with transgenic mice, the mice exhibited resistance to the typical effects of the target gluten antigen and a related type on the digestive system. As with much research, there is still a lot of work to do, including testing resistance to other types of gluten and whether there are still long-term deleterious effects on true celiac digestive systems as the transgenic mice only had HLA-DQ2.5 reactivity.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, we covered “inverse vaccines” in more detail previously.

Using Donor Immune Cells To Mass-Produce CAR-T Autoimmune Therapies

October 7, 2024 by 3 Comments

As exciting as immunotherapies are in terms of fighting cancer, correcting autoimmune disorders and so on, they come with a major disadvantage. Due to the current procedure involving the use of a patient’s own immune (T) cells, this making such therapies rather expensive and involved for the patient. Recent research has therefore focused on answering the question whether T cells from healthy donors could be somehow used instead, with promising results from a recent study on three human patients, as reported in Nature.

The full study results (paywalled) by [Xiaobing Wang] et al. are published in Cell, with the clinical trial details available on the ClinicalTrials.gov website. For this particular trial the goal was to attempt to cure the autoimmune conditions of the three study participants (being necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) and diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc)). The T cells used in the study were obtained from a healthy 21-year old woman, and modified with chimeric antigen receptors targeting B (memory) cells. Using CRISPR-Cas9 the T cells were then further modified to prevent the donor cells from attacking the patient’s cells and vice versa.

After injection, the CAR-T cells got to work, multiplying and seeking out the target B cells, including the pathogenic ones underlying the autoimmune conditions. This persisted for a few weeks until the CAR-T cells effectively vanished and new B cells began to emerge, with a clear decrease in autoantibodies. Two months after beginning treatment, all three participants noted marked improvements in their conditions, which persisted at 6 months. For the woman with IMNM, muscle strength had increased dramatically with undetectable autoantibody levels, and the two men with dcSSc saw scar tissue formation reversed and their skin condition improve massively.

It remains to be seen whether this period of remission in these patients is permanent, and whether there any side effects of CAR-T cell therapy. We previously reported on CAR-T cell therapies and the many promises which they hold. Depending on the outcome of these early trials, it could mean that autoimmune conditions, allergies and cancer will soon be worries of the past, marking another massive medical milestone not unlike the invention of vaccines and the discovery of antibiotics.

Inverse Vaccines Could Help Treat Autoimmune Conditions

September 25, 2023 by 80 Comments

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system starts attacking the body’s own cells. They can cause a wide range of deleterious symptoms that greatly reduce a patient’s quality of life. Treatments often involve globally suppressing the immune system, which can lead to a host of undesirable side effects.

However, researchers at the University of Chicago might have found a workaround by tapping into the body’s own control mechanisms. It may be possible to hack the immune system and change its targeting without disabling it entirely. The new technique of creating “inverse vaccines” could revolutionize the treatment of autoimmune conditions.

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