Scientists from University of California claim to have identified a potential therapeutic target for autoimmune diseases.
They have discovered an abnormality in a patient’s immune system that may lead to safer therapies for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and colitis, as well as potential new ways to treat transplant rejection.While studying a woman patient with frequent infections in the ears, urinary tract and lungs, the researchers identified antibodies from the immune system that prevent infection-fighting T cells from moving through her blood stream and entering her body’s organs to attack invaders such as bacteria or viruses.
Autoimmunity occurs when the body perceives its own cells or tissue as foreign organisms and creates an immune response to itself and the majority of the sufferers are women.
"This is the first selective antibody of its type discovered in a patient," said lead study author Edward J. Goetzl, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and immunology.
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Multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and arthritis are among a variety of autoimmune diseases that are aggravated when one type of white blood cell, called the immune regulatory cell.
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"Our study offers a potential new approach to developing safer, more targeted therapies based on human antibodies," he added.
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A set of genetically caused diseases from type 1 diabetes to alopecia, from which the imbalance of immune regulating system and killer cells in autoimmune disease can be understood.
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The studies revealed that the patient’s CD4 T cells did not move out of her lymph nodes as they would in a normal immune system because her body created antibodies to one type of sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) receptor.
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New Way to Block Inflammation in Autoimmune Disease Identified
Researchers have revealed that blocking cell-surface receptor called DR3 can significantly slow or prevent inflammation in autoimmune disease without leaving the body at serious infections risk.
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The researchers then explored whether the woman’s antibodies effectively could inhibit an autoimmune response in mice.
Antibodies against the S1P receptor, created from the patient’s antibody-producing cells, were injected into mice that were induced to develop colitis.
The result was a significant reduction in severity of their diseases, including colitis-associated weight loss, in those mice compared to mice that did not receive the antibodies.
"These results have broad biological implications, since the cells that carry out our immune responses are present in every organ," said Goetzl, director of UCSF Allergy and Immunology Research.
The study appears in online edition of "The FASEB Journal," the official journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Source-ANI
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