By Ria Kakkad – Drug Target Review
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), US, have developed a novel, potentially life-saving approach that may prevent antibodies from triggering immune rejection of engineered therapeutic and transplant cells.
Rejection mediated by antibodies — as opposed to the chemical assault initiated by immune cells — has proven particularly tricky to resolve, a factor holding held back the development of some of these treatments.
The new strategy, described in Nature Biotechnology, involved using a “decoy” receptor to capture the antibodies and take them out of circulation before they could kill the therapeutic cells, that they treat as invading foreigners. The tactic may also be useful for organ transplants.