How to ‘switch off’ autoimmune diseases
University of Bristol researchers have discovered how to stop cells from attacking healthy body tissue in debilitating autoimmune diseases (such as multiple sclerosis), where the body’s immune system destroys its own tissue by mistake.
The cells were converted from being aggressive to actually protecting against disease.
The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, was published September 3 in Nature Communications. The researchers hope the finding will lead to widespread use of “antigen-specific immunotherapy” as a treatment for many autoimmune disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), type 1 diabetes, Graves’ disease, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). (An antigen is a substance that generates an adaptive immune response.)
