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grabbed the attention of the medical community around the world: A trial of CAR T -cell therapy for fifteen patients in Germany suffering from several autoimmune disease s was astonishingly successful. All patients greatly recovered or went into remission, and the responses lasted a mean of fifteen months without any relapse.
But could the same approach work in an autoimmune disease like lupus? The rationale makes sense: In certain blood cancers, B cells proliferate uncontrollably. In autoimmune diseases, the B cells produce antibodies that attack the body. That first patient has just passed the 1000-day mark of remission. She has gone back to her education and is even running five times a week. At the time of study publication, the other patients had seen their fatigue dramatically reduced or eliminated and had returned to normal life without any medication. They were no longer taking immunosuppressants, spending their days in and out of the hospital to treat their debilitating symptoms.
Bruce Levine, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and one of the founding pioneers of CAR T therapy, calls the results of Mueller’s study “beyond striking.” He adds, “There appears to be a reset which is better than lifelong suppression.” CAR T has come a long way in a relatively short time, but we may only be on the precipice of what it can do for all kinds of patients. Levine chuckles when he recalls how it used to be in the early days, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
That’s in large part because of the drawbacks with the current methods: They are manufactured bespoke for each patient, which takes time and is expensive, as well as hard on patients. They must take chemotherapy to deplete their immune systems before the reinfusion of the CAR T cells.
Mrna Lupus Autoimmune Disease B Cell T Cell Myasthenia Gravis Myositis Emily Whitehead Autoimmune Treatment
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