Autoimmune diseases are a common health problem, and while immunosuppression can help relieve symptoms, it can cause other complications. In a new study, a team of scientists at the American Scripps Research Institute developed nanoparticles that can selectively target problematic immune cells to significantly delay and even prevent arthritis, according to the New Atlas website. New Atlas Citing the journal ACS Nano.
The immune system is the body’s first and strongest line of defense against disease, but it can sometimes become overzealous and start attacking healthy cells and tissues. Overactivity of the immune system can lead to a range of autoimmune diseases, which can be treated with drugs that suppress the immune system, but of course cause other complications, such as an increased risk of infectious diseases.
For the new study, the Scripps team of scientists investigated the possibility of applying a technique that would just shut down the immune cells that cause autoimmune problems, while letting the rest do their important job of fighting real health threats. The list of autoimmune diseases includes rheumatoid arthritis, which is triggered by a single protein in the body, known as an “autoantigen”, around which the experiments of the US study centered.
Expressive
T cell stimulation
The Escripps team of scientists has designed nanoparticles that contain both the rheumatoid arthritis-causing autoantigen (RASA), the CD22-binding molecule, and rapamycin, a drug that stimulates the production of Treg cells that, as the name suggests, suppress other potentially harmful immune cells. Together, the components help the nanoparticles counteract the disease-causing autoimmune reaction without requiring a complete shutdown of the immune system.
Encouraging results
The researchers tested the nanoparticle treatment on lab mice engineered to be susceptible to arthritis by attacking an autoantigen called GPI.
The most encouraging results were that a third of the treated mice showed no signs of arthritis by the end of the experiment after 300 days, which represents a significant portion of the lab mice’s lifespan. Close examinations showed that the treatment was working as hoped, with the production of anti-GPI antibodies significantly reduced, as well as the numbers of T reg cells.
more effective immunity
“We were able to treat a third of these animals in the early stages of the study, and I think there is potential to combine the nanoparticles with other immunomodulatory therapies to make them more effective,” said James Paulson, the study’s lead researcher, noting that the next step is “in addition to demonstrating the selective technology.” Innovative against other autoimmune diseases, which are caused by an unwanted immune reaction to a self-antigen.