“One woman and two men with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered and CRISPR-modified immune cells,” reports Nature:
The three individuals from China are the first people with autoimmune disorders to be treated with engineered immune cells created from donor cells, rather than ones collected from their own bodies. This advance is the first step towards mass production of such therapies.
One of the recipients, Mr Gong, a 57-year-old man from Shanghai, has systemic sclerosis, which affects connective tissue and can result in skin stiffening and organ damage. He says that three days after receiving the therapy, he felt his skin loosen and he could start moving his fingers and opening his mouth again. Two weeks later, he returned to his office job. ‘I feel very good,’ he says, more than a year after receiving the treatment.
Engineered immune cells, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, have shown great promise in treating blood cancers, half a dozen products having been approved in the United States. They also show potential for treating autoimmune conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis, in which rogue immune cells release autoantibodies that attack the body’s own tissue. But the therapy typically relies on a person’s own immune cells, and this personalization makes it expensive and time consuming.
Researchers have therefore started creating CAR-T therapies from donated immune cells. If successful, the approach would allow pharmaceutical companies to scale up manufacturing, potentially slashing costs and production times. Instead of making one treatment for one person, therapies for more than 100 people could be made from one donor’s cells.
Researchers think an inverse vaccine may cure horrific autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis. The University of Chicago reports that a “new type of vaccine… has shown in the lab setting that it can completely reverse autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes — all without shutting down the rest of the immune system.” The new “inverse vaccine” was developed by researchers at the university’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME)…”A typical vaccine teaches the human immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that should be attacked. The new ‘inverse vaccine’ does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases, it can stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis, in which the immune system attacks a person’s healthy tissues. The inverse vaccine…takes advantage of how the liver naturally marks molecules from broken-down cells with ‘do not attack’ flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes. PME researchers coupled an antigen — a molecule being attacked by the immune system— with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend, rather than foe.”
A man recently received the world’s first whole-eye and face transplant.
A genetically-modified chicken lays eggs that people allergic to eggs can eat. Scientists have genetically engineered a cow that produces human insulin in its milk.
Genetic engineering recently produced pork that people who are allergic to pork can eat.
Artificial wombs could be coming soon, to prevent premature babies from dying or being permanently disabled due to premature life outside the womb.
Doctors are already beginning to do womb transplants. A woman who was previously unable to have children received her sister’s womb in the first womb transplant in England.
Scientists recently developed a treatment for alcoholism that reduces drinking by 90% among lab monkeys.