New Personalized Therapy Works on the Cellular Level

A research team at the Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), led by Dr. Mario Delgado, claim to have successfully developed a cellular therapy to treat mice with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and multiple sclerosis. The results of this study, which were published in the September 2005 digital edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate the disappearance of symptoms and also a reversion of the degenerative process.

Autoimmune diseases, such as RA, occur when the body's immune system attacks its own tissues, rather than foreign bacteria or pathogens. The body's immune system is governed in part by Regulatory T (Tr) cells. These white blood cells suppress the activation of the immune system; a lack of Tr cells has been shown to result in severe autoimmune diseases.

The study focused on dendritic cells, a type of cell that helps direct immune response. These cells were injected into mice afflicted with RA, where they induced the production of Tr cells, in turn neutralizing the immune cells that attacked joint components.

A possible therapeutic process would start with the extraction of blood or marrow cells from the RA patient. Then, these cells would be treated with vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), an immunosuppresive protein that acts as a powerful anti-inflammatory agent. This turns the extracted cells into dendritic cells, which are then injected into the patient to encourage new Tr cell production, controlling the immune system from attacking the body. An alternative therapy could be based on using these regulating dendritic cells in vitro to generate the Tr cells that could be then injected into the patient.

According to the team, the results with the animal models were very promising. They are, however, cautious about its eventual use in humans, and warned that being this treatment requires customized personal cellular therapy, high costs are implied.

Article References
Medscape News Archive, site accessed on 01/29/06.

Medscape Today, site accessed on 01/30/06