Chinese scientists’ cell therapy injection can treat asthma, keeping it under control long-term with a single injection: Study
Chinese scientists say an immunotherapy treatment widely used to fight cancer has demonstrated potential for non-cancer diseases and that a single dose could provide long-term protection against asthma.
Asthma, the most prevalent respiratory disease, affects more than 300 million people worldwide and causes more than 250,000 deaths per year.
Clinically, it is characterized by intermittent symptoms of coughing, wheezing, chest pain and shortness of breath due to airway obstruction. But no therapy can induce a lasting remission with just one dose.
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According to Peng Min and his colleagues, most of whom are from the School of Basic Medical Sciences at Tsinghua University, asthma in about half of patients is caused by a group of cytokines, including IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13.
Cytokines are signaling proteins that help control inflammation in the body, but too many cytokines can lead to excessive inflammation and conditions such as autoimmune diseases. Currently, biologic medical products that target these proteins are approved to treat severe asthma, but require lifelong dosing.
In their latest study, Peng’s team developed a new way to target this group of cytokines simultaneously with a cellular treatment called CAR-T.
CAR-T, which stands for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, works by genetically engineering a patient’s own killer T cells – a type of white blood cell essential for fighting infections – to recognize and destroy enemies, such as cancer cells. This new form of immunotherapy has successfully treated some types of blood cancer.
They found that a single infusion of engineered cells, without any pretreatment, was sufficient in mice to provide sustained suppression of lung inflammation and alleviate asthma symptoms for more than a year.
The results were published on Monday in the scientific journal Nature Immunology.
The new cell therapy represents an option for asthma patients to “achieve long-term symptom remission and live a normal life with a single administration of cells,” the team said.
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In addition to asthma, they stated that other diseases caused by the same factors – such as allergies, atopic dermatitis or obstructive lung disease – could potentially be treated with this cell therapy.
In a “News and Views” article published in the same issue of the magazine, Bart Lambrecht, a medical specialist at Ghent University in Belgium, and his colleague warned that more work was needed on the feasibility and safety of such an approach before modification. cells could be used in the clinic.
An important consideration, they pointed out, was patient selection. Biomarkers or clinical characteristics that could predict the superiority of new CAR-T cell therapy over existing biologic medical products “remain to be studied,” they said.
