A small trial used designer CAR T cells to reboot the immune systems of patients with three autoimmune diseases, but it's still too early to say wheth

'Like a reset button on a computer': Designer cells 'reboot' immune system in 3 different autoimmune diseases

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2024-11-19 23:00:04

A small trial used designer CAR T cells to reboot the immune systems of patients with three autoimmune diseases, but it's still too early to say whether the treatment works in the long term.

In an early-stage clinical trial, scientists used designer immune cells to "reboot" the immune systems of patients with various autoimmune diseases.

The trial used a form of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, which has become a mainstay treatment for blood cancers, like leukemia.

Only a few patients were included in this initial trial, and the trial was short — so it's too early to say whether this treatment works over the long term. But markers of disease in the patients' blood suggest the autoimmune processes had been shut down, at least for now.

"I think it will change the standard of care in lupus," said study co-author Dr. Georg Schett, vice president of research and head of the Department of Internal Medicine at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.