Researchers have developed an “inverse vaccine” that reverses the damage caused when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s healthy organs and tissues in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. It could pave the way to a treatment for these diseases that doesn’t require suppressing the entire immune system.
Normally, a vaccine teaches the body’s immune system to recognize a viral or bacterial invader as an enemy that needs to be destroyed. Now, researchers from the University of Chicago have created an “inverse vaccine” that does the opposite.
The novel vaccine removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule, which, when fighting pathogens, would be undesirable but, in the context of autoimmune diseases, may prove to be a cure.
It’s the job of the immune system’s T cells to recognize specific foreign antigens on the surfaces of unwanted cells and launch an attack against them. However, T cells can sometimes get it wrong. In the case of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, the T cells become self-reactive, mistakenly considering healthy organs and tissues to be foreign organisms.
The researchers were aware of the importance of the liver in mediating local and systemic tolerance to self-antigens and foreign antigens. They exploited the organ’s natural mechanism of marking molecules from broken down cells with a ‘do not attack’ flag to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes. By coupling an antigen with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell, the liver recognized it as a friend rather than an enemy.
American Buddhist Net 