Auto Immune Cures On Horizon ?

Stumbled across some new thinking and ideas on Auto Immune disease treatment. Dumping some links further below of what I found. Let you judge for yourself.

Some background. Apparently there is a relatively new method for treating certain forms of cancer. It is called 'CAR-T' cell therapy. Basically, one's immune system T cells are modified in the lab with a custom designed antibody protein affixed to the surface of the T cell. An antibody which targets only the cancer cells. Then the T cells are re-infused. Cancer, in effect, is destroyed by one's own immune system - with a little help from CAR-T therapy to point it in the correct direction. Tricky.

But now, the thinking is to modify not plain T cells but T-Natural-Killer cells instead. Thus CAR-NK (or CAR-NKT) therapy. The advantage of NK cells is that they don't have to be harvested from you. And once created, they can be given to (mostly?) anyone. So treatment cost of the method becomes practical.

The auto immune angle. Also with the custom antibodies affixed. Instead of targeting cancer cells, any group of cells can be targeted. So immune system cells which are responsible for one's form of auto immune disease can be targeted. For example, create CAR-NK cells which target only the T-memory cells which are causing one's body to never forget how to destroy platelets. Yea ! It is kind of like: destroy ITP T cells only, instead of all of ones B cells, like Rituxan does.

Here are some links I could find on this. LOL, much better explanations than I can give.

"Novel CAR NK-cell technology could lead to new treatments for lupus, other incurable diseases", May 2020
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/novel-car-nk-cell-technology-could-lead-to-new-treatments-for-lupus-other-incurable-diseases-301057216.html

"MD Anderson Announces New Approach to CAR-T Using Natural Killer Cells", Feb 2020
www.pharmalive.com/md-anderson-announces-new-approach-to-car-t-using-natural-killer-cells/

"Role of NK and NKT Cells in Immunity and Disease", Apr 2003
www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2003/april/role-of-nk-and-nkt-cells-in-immunity-and-disease


On a side note about SLE. Here is an interesting read on 'The Waste Disposal Hypothesis and SLE' (about a third the way down the page).
"Antibody-mediated autoimmune diseases"
www.immunopaedia.org.za/immunology/advanced/10-antibody-mediated-autoimmune-diseases/

That's interesting hal.
But how you know if all of memory T cells don't know how to destroy platelet?
Like all of them may have a #include<killPlatelet> code in them . And wiping them out may do more harm than good.

Lman, AFAIK all T cells only know one 'antigen' or antibody (protein cluster of differentiation). LOL, only one include statement per cell. Before they have an include statement, they are known as 'naive' T cells and don't yet know about any antigen.

Also, as I understand, T-memory cells don't do the destroying. It is T-killer cells that do that. I think it would be correct to say that T-helper and T-regs play an intermediary/controlling roll between T-memory cells and T-killer cells.

It doesn't end there. There are several more T cell types. For lack of a better link, Wiki gives one an ok start on terminology, functionality, and inter cell signalling.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_cell
Besides naive T cells, I count 7 main cell types in all. Then each type can have multiple sub types. Yikes. It all looks intensely complicated to me.

Hal.
Do you mean cells that destroy invaders (or platelets, in our case) have a constructor like this?
ImmuneCell immuneCell= new ImmuneCell(Other default attributes, Antibody antiPlateletAntiBody)
Then, two questions arise:
1-how one is going to be able to find and destroy these cells in a micrometer scale environment?
2-You mean for each invader, there is a specific cell? Then who controls how many of each immune cell armed with a specific antibody exist? and how makes new instance of it?

Lman, have you considered auditing a course in 'immunology', LOL. I got a C in high school biology so this stuff is all a huge learning curve for me. I can try to answer your questions but will likely be wrong, or at least, incomplete.

Don't forget, there are also 'B cells' and free floating 'antibodies'. HUGE quantities of antibodies. Certain T cell types are able to mobilize B cells and their associated antibodies to do any mass destruction necessary. Might want to look up 'opsonisation' and 'macrophage' to get a better picture of all of that.

For question two, might look up 'antigen presenting cell', aka APC, and what is involved with it.