Fat bubbles in “precision” immunotherapy help calm arthritis
The human immune system is remarkable in being able to fight off invading bacteria and prevent infection, but it can sometimes attack healthy cells in the body, leading to painful autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and so on. To prevent these diseases, researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, have devised a specific therapy to restore immune cells to healthy function.
Normally, the immune system uses T cells to recognise and attack bacteria/toxins –the system’s dendritic cells “teach” T cells what they should target. The researchers thus tried changing these “lessons” using tiny fat bubbles called liposomes, which are loaded with specific antigens, to reprogram the rogue T cells.Antigens are the molecules that trigger an immune response, like inflammation.
UQ’s Professor Ranjeny Thomas explains that the dendritic cells naturally like to ‘eat’ small fat particles, “When we inject liposomes into the skin they traffic to the lymph nodes, and the lymph node dendritic cells rapidly gobble up the liposomes. The contents of the liposomes alter the dendritic cells so that they re-educate rogue T cells, to calm them down.”
As affected patients currently require daily medications to modify or suppress their immune system, this new method effectively re-regulates the immune system to focus on fighting infections once again. Mice experiments held promise in treating existing autoimmune diseases or preventing them –the antigen-specific liposome immunotherapy, with injections,is much preferred over intense chemotherapy procedures to fix a faulty immune system.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
