2 ms·
From what I understand, autoimmune diseases are a mix of genetic predisposition and "learned behaviour" by the human immune system, i.e. some stressor making th
by vanderZwan 9y ago
From what I understand, autoimmune diseases are a mix of genetic predisposition and "learned behaviour" by the human immune system, i.e. some stressor making the immune system mislabeling a part of the own body as hostile. Once this is "learned", would removing the genetic predisposition even have an effect? Do we even know how the immune system "remembers" previous illnesses?
If not, gene therapy can only be applied pre-emptively, I guess, unless we somehow manage to isolate the mechanism of how measles resets the immune system, and apply it selectively to the part that has learned the autoimmune behaviour[0].
[0] http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/6168/20150508/measles-weaken-immune-system-years.htm http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/6168/20150508/measles-w...
- aaavl2821 9y agoWe actually have a pretty decent understanding regarding how the immune system remembers illnesses, although it is above my pay grade. if interested, read up on "adaptive immune system" the genes involved in autoimmune disease are not as well understood as in some other diseases, and the individual contribution of any one gene is pretty small in autoimmune disease (compared to, say, spinal muscular atrophy). so as you say, a gene therapy approach might not be the right tool for the job. a lot of current approaches focus on "retraining" immune cells to be "good" rather than "bad" cells. here's a blog post about one of the leading startups in the space which was acquired by celgene, a large biotech company, for almost $800M earlier this year, just 3 months after raising their series a: https://lifescivc.com/2016/09/re-balancing-immunity-via-regulatory-t-cell-potentiation-introducing-delinia/ https://lifescivc.com/2016/09/re-balancing-immunity-via-regu...