Vaccine Shows Promise for Autoimmune Diseases

A vaccine has reversed an arthritic-like disease in rats by mobilizing part of the immune system to protect joints under attack by other immune cells, holding the promise of treating rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), and other autoimmune diseases. The work was reported in two related papers in the September 2002 Journal of Immunology.

Current treatments for autoimmune diseases involve either steroids, which fight inflammation caused by immune system attacks, or immunosuppressant drugs, which depress immune system function generally. Both approaches create serious side effects and can only slow, but not stop, the progress of the diseases.

In effect, there is a "civil war” within the immune system itself, with one part attacking and the other part protecting the body's own cells. The new approach seeks to help the "good part” of the immune system in its fight with the "bad” or autoimmune part. First, researchers identified that IP-10 is one of the specific proteins responsible for the progression of autoimmune diseases, and that the immune system tries to restrain the harmful activity of IP-10 by producing autoantibodies against it. They then generated a special vaccine that amplifies the production of these beneficial antibodies. This vaccine rapidly suppressed experimentally induced rheumatoid arthritis and MS.

"We are hopeful that the gene-based vaccine will be much better, since only a few vaccinations are needed to train the immune system to destroy IP-10, and the rat results indicate that chronic relief may be possible,” said Dr. Nathan Karin of the department of immunology at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel; www.technion.ac.il) and the research team leader. While the vaccine will interfere with IP-10 when the immune system uses it to label actual invaders such as bacteria, Dr. Karin does not expect this will cause serious side effects.




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