Researchers from Pritzker Molecular Engineering, under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, demonstrated that their compound can eliminate the autoimmune response linked to multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed
This article is garbage but I’m a molecular biologist and the publication they’re talking about is really neat.
The “ELI5 to the point of maybe reducing out the truth” way to explain it is that the researchers can add “flags” to proteins associated with immune responses that make cells pick them up and examine them. This is shown to work for allergins (so say, add a flag to peanut protein and the cells can look at it more closely, go “oh nvm this is fine” and stop freaking out about peanuts) as well as autoimmune diseases (where cells mistake other cells from the same body as potential threats).
It’s not nearly to a treatment stage, but tbh this is one of the more exciting approaches I’ve seen, and I do similar research and thus read a lot of papers like this.
There’s a lot of evidence that we are entering a biological “golden age” and we will discover a ton of amazing things very soon. It’s worrysome that we still have to deal with instability in other parts of life (climate change, wealth inequality, political polarization) that might slow down the process of turning these discoveries into actual treatments we can use to make lives better…
Still, don’t doubt everything you read! A lot of cool stuff is coming, the trick is getting it past the red tape
Wealth inequality won’t stop these discoveries making people’s lives better, it will just ensure that the 1% live forever in perfect health and the 99% get to watch their kids and grandkids get sicker as the environment, living standards and employment situation deteriorate, until automation gets to a point where the working class are no longer required and can be safely left to starve or killed off.
Americans invest milions in healh evolution and only 1% of the americans can use it. On the other hand every other country with a free heath care will provide the solution discovered by americans for free to their people. Americans dying to keep the world alive. This is really fucked up.
This is basically my fear, also. How can I retain hope that new, amazing treatments will help people if we don’t even have equitable access to the current treatments?
For example, we still make people seeking medicines for mental health try going through a gauntlet of dependency-forming drugs from greater than half a century ago (that have been shown to be effective in less than half of people who take them) before insurance will pony up for contemporary alternatives (that work much more often).
I don’t work in the clinical space so don’t trust me too much… but jeez we have so many things to solve before the “bio golden age” really helps normal people
“Red tape” eh? Shit if I had MS or AIDS I’d get some red contact lenses and some fake white fur, just don’t ask where the rat tail is attached, and be in for clinical trials in the AM. “I’m a rat it’s fine. I mean squeek squeek.”
That is so funny… tbh I know I’d get shit for this professionally, but it definitely frustrates me that we don’t allow people with few other choices to have access to crazy, left field treatment stuff.
My best friend died of a specific and rare cancer this year. We know exactly how that cancer works on a molecular level, and we’ve found a few chemicals that interfere with the function of those cells in vitro while not seeming to harm average cells.
Sure, it’s a huge risk to take that drug that’s only been tested in a dish, and it wouldn’t be worth it for most people. But he was going to (and did) die within a year of diagnosis. It’s not like he had other options.
Maybe he should have invested in a rat costume ;)
Every time I see articles like this I’m very happy for everyone having those horribly debilitating and deadly autoimmune diseases.
Then with some shame I hope it might maybe one day also cure my slightly debilitating non deadly simple allergies one day.
Yay it seems it might be good for both!
As someone with both Multiple Sclerosis and a whole bunch of environmental and food allergies, I hope we both get helped.
Well, you’ll also be happy to know that they started this work on allergin way before working on autoimmune disease, and in my opinion, the evidence that it works for allergies is much stronger than how it works for autoimmune diseases! Not necessarily because it won’t work for auto immune stuff… just that they have done less confirming.
I have severe allergenic asthma so I was excited about it too 😁
Ooh, thanks for the excellent information!
It’s so hard to come by nowadays.
The privacy on that site was horrible, and I stoped de-selecting vendors who want permission to track me after two minutes.
But I wanted to ask you: are there any biologics based on this discovery in phase I or even II at this point? Any odds on one of them making it to III?
(also re: your last comment, read William Gibson’s The Peripheral; you are describing his “jackpot” scenario)
Just open the page in a private window at that point, and click the “yeah sure track everything bro” button.
“Private browsing” is for not letting your mom see your porno history on the family computer, it does fuck all for you being tracked online.
It deletes the cookies from Incognito, if you only open that site in incognito and then close the tab, it does nothing.
It still knows your IP and browser fingerprinting still works, they still know who you are and what sites you visit. If you change your VPN server you’re a little closer, and of course there’s Tor assuming you don’t get a malicious exit/entry node set, but private browsing isn’t as private as people seem to expect.
Fair enough.
It’s actually good in firefox and safari, just don’t use chrome
Nope! This research is all done in rodents, to my knowledge. I’m always like “wow what a cool and maybe lifesaving discovery!.. for people in like a decade+!” 🙃
(thanks for the book rec!)
Maybe if people knew they’re going to be around for 200 years they’d think twice about these other issues because now it’s affecting them too and not just the next generation.
Thanks for the time saving summary
Hope it’s not a stupid question but would this kind of thing work for ankylosing spondylitis??
I ask because I suffer from AS the doctor’s that I’ve gone to are always arguing whether it’s an autoimmune or an autoinflammatory disease, and on the web it says that the underlying mechanism is either of the two as well.
So it’s not clear to me whether it’s one or the other, or if itimplies the same thing. I’ve read a huge deal about AS but I’m not really good at biology or medicine to understand a lot.
Honestly the only reason I’m commenting -and asking- here, is because I want to have hope that this actually leads up to something that can help me stop this fucking pain that makes me feel like I want to die (figuratively) but I’m afraid of this being a clickbait article.
Also my English is not the best so sorry for any mistakes and for the long comment.
I’m sorry! My knowledge of this process does not extend to the point where I could even give you a hint of the answer. To be honest, it would require me diving into the underlying mechanisms of your condition, and it sound like your doctor has said it isn’t even settled science why it’s happening, so I don’t think anyone can tell you if this would work for you.
I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear, but two things: 1) this treatment is a long way off anyway, so anyone will have to wait for it to be available, and 2) there are probably many other treatments coming down the line for your condition… even if those also take a long time.
Anyway, I’m sorry for your pain and that I couldn’t help! Honestly, I hope something will be available to help you many years before this becomes a treatment option.
Do you take humira or another medicine for it? I have AS too and it’s bearable with Humira for me. But yeah if this research leads to something that would be great
Oof I’ve had an experience with these meds…
I used to take Humira for 5 years but my country stopped delivering it (I used to live in Venezuela), then I moved ti the US and started Humira again, but it was about 30-50% effective only, I still had a lot of pain
I then went through Cosentyx and Taltz, none worked. Then I tried Enbrel, same effectiveness, got it through a foundation. Healthcare didn’t want to cover it and the foundation didn’t approve me if I had Healthcare.
Got sick in the US, lost all my money (due to lack of money), so I spent the little I had saved to return to my country, moved to Brazil and I’m about to start Golimumab (Simponi) tomorrow, hopefully it works because I haven’t gotten medication in 2 months and the pain feels unbearable.
Having said all this, if there is a speck of a chance that this helps people with AS and other similar conditions, it would make me happy. Having this kind of pain is unbearable.
Sorry for the long comment, I suddenly wanted to rant about this!
Wow. You’ve tried a lot more than me. I just met a nurse in the airport and she said to try this drug she administers, but I can’t remember the name now… she did send me a link to their website though. But honestly I’m a bit suspicious of stuff like this. https://www.soleohealth.com/chronic-inflammatory-disorder/
But I mean, if you’re desperate then maybe give them a call, idk. Kinda seemed too good to be true, the story she was spinning for me.
Thanks for your comment, I always have to read the comments first to see how legit the research is. You put it very succinctly, thanks.
That would also work for cancer then, wouldn’t it? Since the mutated cells hide from the immune system you can mark a few to get the immune system to take a look and realize that shit is happening, or am I oversimplifying too much?
There are immunotherapy treatments for cancer already. Infections and cancer use the immune system the correct way: “tag” the problem cell/virus part with an antibody, make a lot more antibody and flood your body with it to clear the problem cell/virus.
This is the process a vaccine uses. The old vaccine method is to take a bunch of dead bacteria or inactivated virus and put that in your body. Your body should identify it and begin making antibodies against it. If you do get exposed to the disease, your body is full of antibodies which can immediately clear it, rather than letting the infection/cancer work for a few days without much of an immune response.
An autoimmune disease, a body “tags” its own cells. Then the immune system invades the person’s own tissue.
I have celiac disease. If I eat gluten, the enzymes I use to digest gluten become tagged. Unfortunately, humans make one gluten enzyme (TG2) that’s found everywhere in the body. A third of celiacs will have their thyroid tissue affected if they consume gluten.
One particular antibody, IgE, is known for extreme reactions to antigens. These are the ones known for the immediate and life-threatening allergies (peanuts, shellfish, bees, wheat).
This new stuff appears to be a way to tag antibodies or antigens or memory T cells (they hold the “blueprints” to make antibodies really quickly after your natural antibodies go away) and have the immune system “re-evaluate” the antigen. I’m guessing from the post above and a little of the article. I haven’t heard of this process in the body before.
Cancer itself is not autoimmune (autoimmune inflammation can make it more likely to happen, but tumors don’t form directly through autoimmune mechanisms). So the first pathway used for normal vaccination is what’s needed. The difficulty lies in knowing something in each specific cancer that would make a good antibody target. It is a person’s own cells and DNA, so a lot of care has to be taken to find an appropriate antigen. Immunotherapy treatments that exist are really specific to certain types of cancer. They have much less severe side effects than radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
You’re not oversimplifying from my description, my description was just too simple itself! Unfortunately, no, it wouldn’t work like this. The whole idea is that the cell would pick up anything and discover that it isn’t as dangerous as it thought. That’s the opposite of what we’d want for cancer cells!
Luckily, there are many, many other treatments for various cancers coming in due time, also. My research is actually closer to cancer research than immunology, so I can tell ya-- there’s good stuff coming!
Seeing as this is useful for allergens, is this useful for atopy un general?
Maybe? But it works by flagging specific proteins related to allergenic response. For people with higher tendency to develop allergies in general, I imagine you’d need a LOT of different flagged proteins to cover the bases of what one’s immune system was already alerting to.
Tbh, it might be a good treatment for those individuals for their few, most problematic triggers, but I think in general there are probably better approaches for them!
And into the grey matter of those damned antivaxxers. 🙄
At least this is about autoimmune diseases which aren’t contagious.