General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Inverse vaccine" shows the potential to treat autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.
https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/fine-tuning-immunityA new type of vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) has shown in the lab that it can completely reverse autoimmune diseasesall without shutting down the rest of the immune system.
A typical vaccine teaches the human immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that should be attacked. The new inverse vaccine does just the opposite: it removes the immune systems memory of one particular molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases, it can stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, in which the immune system attacks a persons healthy tissues.
The inverse vaccine, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering in September, takes advantage of a natural process in which the liver marks molecules from broken-down cells with do not attack flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to those cells as they die by natural processes. PME researchers coupled an antigena molecule being attacked by the immune systemwith a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend rather than foe.
In the past, we showed that we could use this approach to prevent autoimmunity, says Jeffrey Hubbell, the Eugene Bell Professor in Tissue Engineering and lead author of the paper. But what is so exciting about this work is that we have shown that we can treat diseases like multiple sclerosis after there is already ongoing inflammation, which is more useful in a real-world context.
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indigovalley
(178 posts)In Lupus a person's immune system attacks their own DNA--if this can be used to stop that process that would be a major breakthrough.
ProfessorGAC
(68,494 posts)Not that it's caused any disability, but I've had MS for 29 years.
For those patients less fortunate than me, this could be quality of life preserving.
Disaffected
(4,879 posts)Early days but, if so, it would be one of the great medical breakthroughs - akin IMO to immunization and antibiotics.
limbicnuminousity
(1,409 posts)Have to wonder if the technology might not be adapted to facilitate organ transplantation without compromising the immune system.
Marthe48
(18,384 posts)if this technology works. Wow.
superpatriotman
(6,449 posts)Please let this be true. Will def ask her rheumatologist at next visit.
et tu
(1,707 posts)hooray for science!!!
erronis
(16,445 posts)so they can promote their own shamanism and cults.
Science allows us to make hypotheses, test and report on the tests, accept criticism of the results and modify our assumptions and tests. These do not exist in cults/religions.