Novel T-Cell Vaccination Therapy for Rheumatoid Arthritis

A company involved in the development and commercialization of cell therapies, announced encouraging data from a clinical trial of 15 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Published in the February 2007 issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, the trial was conducted at the Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences of the People's Republic of China (SIBS), using T-cell vaccination technology exclusively licensed to Opexa (Woodlands, TX, USA).

The results demonstrated that T-cell vaccination was well tolerated and, importantly, induced T-cell regulatory immune responses that collectively correlated with substantial clinical improvement in treated patients. Using the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria to measure reduction in joint swelling, substantial clinical improvements were observed for ACR 20 (73.3%), ACR 50 (67.7%) and ACR 70 (55.3%). Overall there was a significant reduction (p < 0.01) in swollen and tender joint counts. The observed changes in the clinical parameters correlated with a significant (p < 0.05) reduction from baseline in serum markers of inflammation, including erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), and rheumatoid factor (RF). The open label trial included 15 patients who received T-cell vaccination via six subcutaneous inoculations over a period of 12 months.

David McWilliams, president and CEO of Opexa, commented, The findings of the study conducted in China were the basis for our previously announced licensing of the technology from SIBS and serve as the cornerstone of our program to develop T-cell vaccination as a therapy for rheumatoid arthritis. The fact that T-cell vaccination induces regulatory immune responses that are associated with improved clinical and laboratory variables in RA patients suggest that further development of this novel technology is warranted.

For a T-cell vaccine to be effective, it should be able to induce cytotoxic and regulatory immune responses against the pathogenic T-cells. The study conducted indicated that T-cell vaccination with autologous selected synovial T-cells in rheumatoid arthritis patients resulted in the induction of CD4+ Tregs and CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells specific for the T-cell vaccine. The observed regulatory immune responses collectively correlated with clinical improvement in treated patients.




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