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Wednesday Health Report: Cancer immunotherapy showing early promise for autoimmune diseases
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Researchers are exploring whether a cancer therapy could one day offer a lasting treatment for autoimmune diseases.
Researchers believe there are between 80 and 150 autoimmune diseases, many of which are chronic and require one or more daily medications. They are also difficult to diagnose because there is no single test to confirm them, and symptoms often overlap with other conditions.
Dr. Alicia Lieberman with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is leading research into whether CAR T-cell therapy, a cancer immunotherapy that genetically engineers a patient's own T-cells to attack cancer cells, could work the same way for autoimmune diseases.
"These can be pills, these could be infusions or injections, most of which are targeted at dampening the immune response, and they are immunosuppressive to some degree," Lieberman said. "They have side effects to some degree."
The therapy is still in early clinical trials but is showing promise. Patients with severe lupus, lupus nephritis, scleroderma and neurologic conditions like MS and stiff person syndrome have seen results.
"Patients who have undergone this treatment have experienced significant improvement in their symptoms, if not reversal," Lieberman said.
The goal of the research is to develop a one-and-done treatment that could train a patient's body to fight the disease on its own.
"This would be an immune reset, really disrupt the autoimmune process that's set up in the tissue," Lieberman said, "and the hope is that people will not need treatments long-term."
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