Disarm the rebellious immune cells responsible for many diseases

A lab-engineered protein has managed to disarm rebellious immune cells , which attack the organism to which they belong, triggering so-called autoimmune diseases . The result, obtained on mice , could pave the way for future therapies against autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis . Published in the journal Cell, it is due to research conducted by the Grossman School of Medicine at New York University, the Chinese Zhejiang University and the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Until now, therapies focused on T lymphocytes , the cells of the immune system involved in attacking the patient's tissues, have proven ineffective and problematic , because blocking these cells indiscriminately exposes the body to very high risks of infections and tumors. The researchers coordinated by Jun Wang of Grossman, Jack Wei Chen of Zhejiang and Jizhong Lou of the Chinese Academy, discovered that by keeping T lymphocytes and an engineered protein very close to each other , the latter can turn off the immune cells in a much more targeted way, thanks to a mechanism that normally regulates the immune response . The authors of the study tested the new protein in animal models of type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis: the therapy significantly suppressed the T cell attacks and reduced the damage and inflammation inflicted on different tissues, such as the pancreas and liver. "Our results reveal an intricate mechanism that allows for a targeted therapeutic approach to autoimmune diseases caused by T cells," says Wang, "for which there is currently a lack of effective immunotherapies."