Treatment against asthma?: Injection of CAR-T cells manages to remit this disease in mice in the long term

A scientific team has designed a treatment against asma based on CAR-T cells, in which a single injection of these cells achieved a remission of the signs and symptoms of the disease for at least one year in mice.

The details of the strategy are published in the journal Nature Immunology, in an article led by researchers from Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China. The findings, although they have yet to be demonstrated in humans, may represent ‘a potential avenue’ for the development of therapies capable of inducing long-term remission of allergic asthma.

Asthma is one of the most prevalent respiratory diseases, affecting more than 300 million people worldwide and causing about 250,000 deaths a year, according to a journal summary.

CAR-T cell therapy has been widely used to treat diseases such as cancer and could be a promising avenue for treating chronic asthma.

CAR-T cell treatment, whose full name is chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (abbreviated as CAR-T), involves modifying the immune cells T lymphocytes (white blood cells) in the laboratory. of the sick person so that they are able to recognize and combat, in the case of cancer, tumor cells.

This time, Min Peng and his team designed a CAR-T cell therapy to treat asthma and tested it by administering a single dose in mouse models of allergic asthma.

They then monitored the animals for signs of allergic activity and lung inflammation.

The treatment is designed to act on the causes of allergic reactions. A single injection of CAR-T cells, modified to attack eosinophils themselves – a type of white blood cell that is activated by certain infections and allergies – achieved remission of the signs and symptoms of the disease.

The researchers discovered that CAR-T cells neutralized white blood cells and blocked the function of proteins involved in asthma pathology, suppressing lung inflammation and alleviating asthma symptoms in mice.

Furthermore, these cells were observed to persist for at least a year and continue to prevent allergic immune responses.

The authors note that future clinical trials will need to test whether these CAR-T cells are safe and effective for use in human patients with allergic asthma, and suggest that the therapy could potentially be adapted to help treat other types of allergic diseases.

José Gregorio Soto Campos, director of the Pulmonology and Allergy Clinical Management Unit at the Jerez Hospital, points out that the study published today is of ‘high quality’ in basic research.

The usefulness of therapy based on CAR-T cells had not been studied in asthma, so this research opens ‘new opportunities’, tells this expert who has not participated in the work to Science Media Center Spain, a scientific resources platform. for journalists.