Autoimmune & Inflammation
39 stories
Novartis Halted Eight Autoimmune CAR-T Trials After Three Deaths, Then Called the Killer a "Known Risk"
Three people in Novartis's rap-cel trials died after a runaway inflammatory syndrome, and Bristol Myers froze enrollment in its rival product. Faster manufacturing is the leading suspect, and no public report yet says how many patients got the drug.
Autoimmune & InflammationNovo Nordisk Paid to Count the Inflamed Heart Failure Patients Its Antibody Is Chasing
Three big studies putting heart failure inflammation anywhere from 38% to more than half were funded by Novo Nordisk, whose IL-6 antibody missed its first outcomes trial in July. Their predictor tables point at fat, smoking and kidneys.
Autoimmune & InflammationKnee Pain Fell From 7 to 3 After This Artery Procedure, but It Keeps Struggling to Beat a Fake One
Berlin doctors plugged inflamed knee vessels with gelatin beads built to dissolve within hours, and median pain fell from 7 to 3 over a year. Nobody got a sham, and the Rotterdam trial that used one calls the effect mainly placebo.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Few Degrees of Foot Angle Beat a Convincing Fake for Arthritic Knees
Personalized foot-angle retraining cut knee arthritis pain 1.2 points more than a sham program over a year, and an MRI marker of cartilage health held up better. Taxpayers paid for it, and there is nothing to refill.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Lupus Drug 'Failed' Its Trial. Its Patients Got Better Anyway.
Enpatoran missed its primary endpoint in 354 lupus patients. But disease activity dropped, the interferon signature fell, and the rashes cleared. The trial's model was built to catch a climbing dose-response, and the drug's effect had plateaued.
Autoimmune & InflammationPesticides Outlawed in the 1970s Are Still in Women's Blood, and They Track With Chronic Inflammation
French scientists screened 45 banned or barely-regulated chemicals in 468 women's blood. Two pesticides cancelled decades ago still tracked with elevated inflammation, and the PFAS quietly pushed an immune signal down.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Cell Long Dismissed as Brain 'Glue' Is Presenting Your Nerves to the Immune System
For a century, astrocytes were dismissed as the brain's passive scaffolding. Now researchers have caught them inside multiple sclerosis lesions dressed as immune cells, arming the very T cells that attack the brain.
Autoimmune & Inflammationargenx's Own Scientists Found Antibody Levels Alone Don't Explain Who Its $225,000 Myasthenia Drug Helps
Six of the paper's authors work for argenx and hold its stock. Their data on 50 patients shows efgartigimod's benefit tracked more closely with how thoroughly it disarmed the rogue antibodies than with how many it stripped away.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Air Never Arrives One Pollutant at a Time, but the Rules Pretend It Does
In a big European analysis, almost every pollutant tested on its own came back borderline. Measure the whole mixture the way it actually reaches the lung, and the adult-asthma signal shows up.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe 47th Human Blood Group Was Hiding in a Protein Almost Too Small to Find
More than 99.9% of us carry the AnWj antigen without knowing. For the rare few born without it, a routine transfusion can turn dangerous, and until now no genetic test could reliably identify them before the damage was done.
Autoimmune & InflammationSeven Biologics, Up to $47,000 a Year, and 89 Percent of Europe's Severe Asthmatics Still Aren't in Remission
The Lancet calls severe asthma an 'unmet need.' A 13,455-patient European registry shows most of those patients are already on the pricey biologics, and 89 percent still have active disease.
Autoimmune & InflammationDonor T Cells Cross Into the Gut Lining and Become Resident Killers That Won't Leave
Columbia researchers tracked more than 51,000 donor T-cell clones across two years and found the ones tied to the worst graft-versus-host disease change identity depending on where they land in the gut, and spike in the blood weeks before symptoms show.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Fat 'Brake' Eased Pain in 49 Men but Barely Touched the Swelling
UCL researchers gave 49 healthy men a drug GlaxoSmithKline shelved after early trials. Pain resolved faster and a class of immune cells shrank, but the heat, redness, and swelling showed no significant change.
Autoimmune & InflammationOxford Found the Cells That May Mark Which Joints Rheumatoid Arthritis Attacks. They Were There Before You Were Born.
The joints rheumatoid arthritis attacks and the ones it spares are built differently in the womb, seeded with different cells before a single joint ever swells.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Immune Cells That Calm Autoimmune Disease Can Also Ignite It. One Protein May Hold the Switch.
Regulatory T cells keep autoimmune disease in check, but under inflammation they can shed their identity and turn inflammatory. In mice, researchers find a protein called TIF1γ restrains that defection by sending a runaway growth signal to be destroyed.
Autoimmune & InflammationMicrofold Cells Got Filed as the Gut's Mail Slot. They Were Organizing Its Defense.
The specialized cells that hand your gut bacteria to the immune system turn out to build the niche that keeps antimicrobial defense switched on, and the same signal that makes them wires in the brake.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Gut's Doorway Cells Have a Second Job: Landlord to Its Barrier Defenders
Microfold cells were filed away as passive antigen samplers. In mice, they turn out to build and staff the niche that keeps the gut's IL-22 defenders alive, the cytokine that fortifies the intestinal barrier and keeps sampled bacteria contained inside its immune outposts.
Autoimmune & InflammationThey Worried a Pig Kidney Would Burn the Bridge to a Human One. In the First Two Patients, It Didn't.
A gene-edited pig kidney kept Tim Andrews off dialysis for a record 271 days before it failed and came out. The worry was that it would leave his immune system too sensitized for a human match. In the first two patients, it hasn't.
Autoimmune & InflammationHow Fiber Teaches a Self-Erasing Gut Wall to Remember for Two Weeks
Butyrate, the compound gut bacteria make from fiber, reprogrammed the intestinal lining of mice to keep raising IL-10 and blunting colitis for 2 weeks after the last dose, and the imprint held even in mice with no gut bacteria at all.
Autoimmune & InflammationLupus Hits Nine Women for Every Man, and the Reason May Be Hiding in DNA Both Sexes Share
Scientists sequenced more than 1.25 million immune cells and found over 1,000 genetic switches set differently in men and women, with the female side tuned for stronger inflammation. It may help explain why lupus hits nine women for every man.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Lung Atlas Found 1,000 Autoimmune-Risk Genes That Blood Studies Missed
For two decades, geneticists mapped thousands of autoimmune-risk variants that sat silent in blood cells. A 1.1-million-cell lung atlas shows the effects switch on only in immune cells lodged in tissue.
Autoimmune & InflammationWhy Anti-TNF Keeps Failing So Many Crohn's Patients: The Drug Never Reached the Cell Holding the Disease Open
Anti-TNF biologics have muzzled the immune system for 25 years, and up to 46 percent of Crohn's patients still fail them. A single-cell atlas points at the structural cells of the gut wall, epigenetically rewired into a state the drugs were never built to reach.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Finest Immune Map of the Sarcoid Lung Explains Why Its Targeted Drugs Keep Failing
National Jewish Health charted more than 150,000 immune cells from sixteen sarcoidosis patients and found a disease with too many moving parts for any single drug to switch off. The targeted therapy that got furthest had already failed Phase 3 and erased 83 percent of its maker's value.
Autoimmune & InflammationOne Protein Keeps Your Immune System's Peacekeeper Cells From Switching Sides
Regulatory T cells are supposed to be the immune system's off switch. Strip out a protein called TIF1γ and, under inflammation, they lose that identity, start producing an inflammatory cytokine, and join the attack.