Lupus treatment that can end a lifetime of medication
He lupus This autoimmune disease chronic, caused by an attack by the immune system itself, which can cause damage to any organ of the body, affecting approximately five million of the world’s population, with a high prevalence among young women.
Most patients suffer fatigue and weight lossOther symptoms that often appear include joint pain, skin rash, hematologic complications, or kidney damage.
At the moment, there is no treatmentalthough you can control with drugs is able to regulate the immune system and stop inflammation, but requires constant use of this drug and, in addition, as SINC explains, in some cases it is ineffective.
CAR T cells
Recent emergence of new biological therapy has opened up new treatment options that will improve the quality of life of patients. This is the case with CAR-T cells.
According to a study published in the journal Natural medicinedrug-free remission lasting up to 17 months after this treatment was demonstrated in five patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.
British media today report on the success of three patients in the UK who received CAR T-cell therapy, while in Germany, according to The Guardian, “patients who received the new treatment are now in remission and do not require treatment.” . medicines.” against lupus.
How CAR-T cells work
To reach these promising conclusions, a research team led by Georg Schettfrom the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) treated five patients (four women and one man) with treatment-resistant systemic lupus erythematosus T cells with anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptors (CARs).
CAR T cells created removal of some white blood cells from a patientincluding immune system T cells and genetically altering them in the laboratory to produce chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). The modifications allow the treated T cells to recognize and destroy antigens on the surface of target pathogenic cells after they are injected back into the patient.
In 2022, Schett and colleagues published the first study of CAR-T therapy for lupus. After three months, all five patients in the study achieved drug-free remission, which lasted an average of eight months after the infusion.
The follow-up study aimed to find out whether remission in patients treated with CD19 CAR-T cells could last longer and whether B-cell depletion would reduce the effectiveness of vaccines that work through B cells to boost antibody responses. Eight patients were included in the second study. By June 2023, all were in remission.
During observation (from 3 to 17 months after treatment), all patients experienced improvement in symptoms, including remission of organ damage, as well as resolution of disease-associated autoantibodies, without the need to continue receiving conventional therapy.
The team notes that common side effects associated with CAR-T cell therapy were mild (such as fever) and no infections were observed.
Limitations of treatment
While the results are encouraging, the researchers themselves say that CAR-T cell therapy has several serious limitations, including potential toxicities such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS). There is also a cost. In the US, a single CAR-T infusion costs between $375,000 and $425,000. These prices do not take into account associated costs, which can be significant.