Scientists have created a vaccine that can reverse autoimmune diseases

Researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, led by Professor Jeffrey Hubbell, have demonstrated that their drug can reverse the autoimmune response associated with multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. The publication told in more detail Scitech Daily.

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Researchers at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed a new vaccine that, in the laboratory, can completely stop autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease - all without shutting down the rest of the immune system.

A regular vaccine teaches a person's immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that needs to be attacked. The new inverse vaccine does just the opposite: it removes the immune system's memory of one molecule. If in infectious diseases such erasure of immune memory is undesirable, then in autoimmune reactions the immune system attacks healthy human tissue, and this method can stop the reaction.

The inverse vaccine takes advantage of the liver's natural way of marking molecules of destroyed cells with "do not attack" flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die through natural processes.

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The researchers combined an antigen—a molecule that is attacked by the immune system—with a molecule resembling a fragment of an old cell that the liver recognizes as a friend rather than a foe. The team demonstrated how the vaccine could successfully stop the autoimmune reaction.

“We have shown in the past that we can use this approach to prevent autoimmune diseases,” said Jeffrey Hubbell, professor of tissue engineering and lead author of the new paper. “But what's really exciting about this work is that we've shown that we can treat diseases like multiple sclerosis after inflammation has already started, which is more useful in real-world settings.”

Deployment of the immune response

The job of the immune system's T cells is to recognize unwanted cells and molecules—from viruses and bacteria to cancer—as foreign to the body and get rid of them. Once T cells begin their initial attack on an antigen, they retain a memory of that invader so they can destroy it more quickly in the future.

However, T cells can make mistakes and recognize healthy cells as foreign. For example, in people with Crohn's disease, the immune system attacks cells in the small intestine, and in people with multiple sclerosis, T cells attack myelin, the protective covering around the nerves.

Hubbell and his colleagues knew that the body has a mechanism that allows immune responses to not every damaged cell—a phenomenon known as peripheral immune tolerance that occurs in the liver. In recent years, they have discovered that labeling molecules with a sugar known as N-acetylgalactosamine (pGal) can mimic this process, directing the molecules to the liver, where tolerance to them develops.

“The idea is that we can attach any molecule to pGal, and that will teach the immune system to tolerate it,” Hubbell explains. “Instead of stimulating immunity as we do with a vaccine, we can suppress it in a very specific way with an inverse vaccine.”

In the new study, the researchers focused on a disease similar to multiple sclerosis, in which the immune system attacks myelin, leading to weakness and numbness, vision loss and ultimately mobility problems and paralysis. The research team linked myelin proteins to pGal and tested the effect of the new inverse vaccine. The immune system stopped attacking the myelin, allowing the nerves to function properly again and reversing the symptoms of the disease in the animals.

In a series of other experiments, scientists have shown that this same approach can minimize other ongoing immune responses.

On the way to clinical trials

Today, autoimmune diseases are usually treated with drugs that largely block the immune system.

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“These treatments can be very effective, but they block the immune responses needed to fight infections, leading to a lot of side effects,” Hubbell says. “If we could treat patients with an inverse vaccine, it would be much more specific and result in fewer side effects.”

More work is needed to study Hubbell's pGal compounds in humans, but the first phase 1 safety trials have already been conducted in people with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease associated with the consumption of wheat, barley and rye, and a phase 1 safety trial is underway in people with multiple sclerosis .

“There are no clinically approved inversion vaccines yet, but we are incredibly excited about the advancement of this technology,” says Hubbell.

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