Breakthrough cancer treatment studied as possible one‑time therapy for autoimmune disease
About 8% of people in the United States live with an autoimmune disease, a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells, tissues or organs.
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Millions of Americans living with autoimmune diseases may one day benefit from a breakthrough cancer therapy now being studied as a possible treatment option.
About 8% of people in the United States live with an autoimmune disease, a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells, tissues or organs.
Many of these diseases are difficult to diagnose, have overlapping symptoms and lack a definitive test.Researchers estimate there may be between 80 and 150 autoimmune diseases, many of them chronic and debilitating, often requiring daily medication.
“These can be pills, these could be infusions or injections,” said Dr. Alicia Lieberman of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Most of which are targeted at dampening the immune response, and they are immunosuppressive to some degree. They have side effects to some degree.”
Lieberman is leading research into whether CAR T‑cell therapy, a cancer immunotherapy that genetically engineers a donor’s or patient’s own T‑cells to attack cancer, could be used to treat autoimmune diseases.
While the research is still in early clinical trials, Lieberman says results so far are promising. “Patients with severe lupus and lupus nephritis, scleroderma, even other neurologic conditions such as MS and stiff person syndrome, patients who have undergone this treatment have experienced significant improvement in their symptoms, if not reversal,” she said.
Lieberman says the goal is a one‑time treatment that retrains the immune system.“This would be an immune reset,” she said. “The hope is that people will not need treatments long‑term.”
