Three New Drugs Could Fight Autoimmune Diseases Effectively

Autoimmune diseases are conditions when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue. There are no cures for these diseases, as the only goals of treatment are to reduce symptoms and control the autoimmune process. Now, though, scientists may have found drugs to combat these diseases.

There are more than 80 types of autoimmune disorders that can pose a serious threat to one's health. One of the better known disorders is multiple sclerosis, which is diagnosed when the body's immune system destroys myelin - a protective sheath that covers your nerves responsible for relaying messages throughout the body.

Researchers from Harvard University as well as the University of California, San Francisco focused on treating a mouse model of multiple sclerosis with three drugs that had the capability of fighting Th17 cells, which is a type of immune cell that attacks normal cells in the body. Their study, "Treg Cells Expressing the Coinhibitory Molecule TIGIT Selectively Inhibit Proinflammatory Th1 and Th17 Cell Responses," was published on April 17 in the journal Immunity.

Their study focused on a class of protein molecules within cells known as transcription factors. According to the Broad Institute, "Transcription factors are proteins that control which genes are turned on or off in the genome. They do so by binding to DNA and other proteins. Once bound to DNA, these proteins can promote or block the enzyme that controls the reading, or 'transcription,' of genes, making genes more or less active."

These transcription factors are responsible for the development of different T-cells - white blood cells that play a central role in cell-medicated immunity - in the immune system. The specifics that the researchers focused on were the ROR gamma t transcription factor and the Th17 T-cell. After applying the three drugs to the mouse form of multiple sclerosis, the researchers found that through inhibiting the function of ROR gamma t, the Th17 cells were prevented from developing.

Although it will take time before it can be tested in clinical trials for humans, Marson Kuchroo, PhD and one of the study's lead authors, expressed, "This is a new, broadly applicable approach for systematically evaluating leading drug candidates for autoimmune diseases," according to a news release.