Novel Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Autoimmune Diseases

The Rockefeller University
posted on 01/26/2010

Autoimmune disorders, such as Type 1 diabetes, transplant rejection, and graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) are caused by the patient's own immune system attacking his or her own cells. One of the key challenges is to determine how to silence the autoimmune reaction, which is termed tolerance. One of the mechanisms to do so is to suppress the self-reactivity with a specific population of regulatory T-cells (T-regs). In non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice, it is known that CD25+CD4+ T-cells inhibit diabetes development, but they do not exist in sufficient numbers to effectively prevent the disease. Our researchers have discovered a way to increase the numbers of these suppressor T-cells using dendritic cells, a specialized cell of the immune system. In addition, their method also allows for the creation of a population of T-regs that is specific for a particular antigen by exposing na

Advantages

Development of new specific immunotherapies for autoimmune disorders, such as Type 1 diabetes,transplant rejection, and GVHD.

Innovation Details

File Number: RU 835

Web site: http://rockefeller.edu/techtransfer/RU835.pdf

Other Information: Principal Investigator: Dr. Ralph M. Steinman Tarbell, et al. 2004. J. Exp. Med., 199:14671477.

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