Revolutionary cell therapy: rebooting the immune system stops autoimmune diseases

Single infusion of CAR-T cells replaces immunosuppressive drugs

23-Feb-2024 - In March 2021, doctors at FAU treated a young woman with a severe autoimmune disease with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for the first time in the world. Today, almost three years later, they have now been able to publish a pilot study in the New England Journal of Medicine and show that ...

Pushing the reset button on autoimmune diease

"What is special about this is that a single infusion of CAR T cells brought down the inflammation and autoimmune response like a house of cards"

21-Sep-2022 - At Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), patients with severe forms of autoimmune diseases are being treated with cells from the body that have been genetically modified, which are known as CAR T cells. This study is the first of its kind in the world. Physicians were astounded ...

New mechanism that leads to inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis discovered

03-Mar-2017 - New research findings suggest that synovial CD4+ T cells that produce IL-21 contribute to joint inflammation by activating synovial fibroblasts in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Understanding the mechanisms of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis is important for the design of new therapies for ...

Study of complex genetic region finds hidden role of NCF1 in multiple autoimmune diseases

10-Feb-2017 - Investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) report pre-clinical research showing that a genetic variant encoded in neutrophil cystolic factor 1 (NCF1) is associated with increased risk for autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid ...

UCB announces Phase 3 clinical trial program for epratuzumab in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus did not meet primary endpoint

30-Jul-2015 - UCB announced that the two EMBODY™ Phase 3 clinical studies for epratuzumab in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) did not meet their primary clinical efficacy endpoints in either dose in both studies. Treatment response in patients who received epratuzumab in addition to standard therapy was not ...

Researchers say lupus treatment shows early promise

16-Feb-2015 - A new treatment that may reverse the effects of the most common type of lupus has shown promising results after undergoing early testing by a team of researchers at University of Florida Health.The findings of a two-year study that used human cells and mouse models were in Science Translational ...

Merck Serono Enters into Research Agreement with Pfizer and Broad Institute

03-Apr-2014 - Merck Serono announced that its U.S. affiliate EMD Serono has signed a research agreement with Pfizer Inc. and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. The collaboration is focused on the genomic profiling of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and Lupus Nephritis (LN) patients. The ...

A genetic accelerator hits the gas on autoimmune diseases

Italian researchers found a DNA sequence that cause the most severe cases of lupus

18-Jan-2012 - A "genetic accelerator" is responsible for the most severe cases of Lupus (systemic lupus erythemathosus), an autoimmune disease: the accelerator, called enhancer HS1.2, speeds up the activity of some critical genes of the immune system involved in the disease.A team of Italian researchers at the ...

Epratuzumab phase IIb data show pipeline drug had positive effect in patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus

11-Nov-2010 - UCB and U.S. based partner Immunomedics Inc.announced that results from the phase IIB study, EMBLEM™, showed that certain doses of epratuzumab were associated with a meaningful and statistically significant reduction in disease activity in adult patients with moderate to severe active SLE. The ...

Karus Therapeutics Commences Preclinical Development of Novel Immune and Inflammation Programmes

03-Nov-2010 - Karus Therapeutics Ltd has commenced preclinical development of its HDAC6 and PI3-Kinase inhibitor programmes for the treatment of immune and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Karus aims to initiate clinical trials for both programmes in 2011. Karus’s highly potent and ...