China develops a gene therapy to tackle autoimmune diseases like lupus and sclerois

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03209-4?error=cookies_not_supported&code=5f80c867-6614-4908-9ea2-83a81a498be3

5 Comments

  1. My mother has Lupus. It’s horrible. Hopefully this is real and becomes available here.

  2. askingforafakefriend on

    What’s with the subject line? “China” develops seems like a bot/political pandering headline.
    We don’t normally start posts with “the United States develops…”
    I think Mods should remove.

  3. ShadowSkill17 on

    Gene therapy, and gene editing are the future of healthcare. It’s the ethical concerns that are the major hurdle.

  4. MemberOfInternet1 on

    Gene therapy and genetics are powerful things.

    >… Xu and his colleagues extracted T cells from a 21-year-old woman and studded them with CARs that recognize CD19, a receptor found on the surface of B cells. They used the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool to knock out five genes in the T cells, to prevent both the grafted cells from attacking the host’s body and the host’s immune system from attacking the donor cells.

    >Once injected into the hosts, the CAR T cells got to work. They multiplied and targeted and destroyed all the B cells — including pathogenic cells linked to the autoimmune conditions. The bioengineered T cells survived for weeks in the recipients before largely vanishing. Eventually, new healthy B cells returned, but no pathogenic ones did. A similar response has been observed in people with autoimmune conditions who received CAR T cells derived from their own cells3.

    Amazing potential general usage.

    >The first person to receive the treatment, in May 2023, was a 42-year-old woman with a type of autoimmune myopathy, which targets skeletal muscle tissue, resulting in weakness and fatigue. Mr Gong, and another man aged 45, had an aggressive form of sclerosis. They started their treatments in June and August 2023.

    >

    >…

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    >Two months after the treatment, the researchers say the woman achieved complete remission, and maintained that status at her six-month follow-up. Baker says that although the woman showed clear clinical improvements, he would be more cautious about calling it complete remission, given the short assessment time. The woman’s autoantibodies had dropped to undetectable levels, and her muscle strength and mobility had improved dramatically.

    >

    >The two men also saw significant improvements in their symptoms — including the reversal of scar-tissue formation — and declines in autoantibody levels.

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    >None of the individuals experienced an extreme inflammatory reaction known as cytokine-release syndrome, which has been observed in some people with cancer who have received CAR-T therapy, and they didn’t show evidence of the graft attacking the host. But the researchers are still trying to determine whether the host’s body rejects the graft over time.

    Amazing individual usage.