“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat MS and other autoimmune diseases

https://pme.uchicago.edu/news/inverse-vaccine-shows-potential-treat-multiple-sclerosis-and-other-autoimmune-diseases

by manicennui • 3 years ago

254 97 3 years ago

pme.uchicago.edu

manicennui• 3 years ago

"A typical vaccine teaches the human immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that should be attacked. The new 'inverse vaccine' does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases, it can stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis, in which the immune system attacks a person’s healthy tissues."

flangola72• 3 years ago

The new 'inverse vaccine' does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases

New bioweapon just dropped

forgetfreeman5• 3 years ago

Because creating a substance that when injected selectively turns off immune response to a single molecule is going to be way easier to administer, cheaper to manufacture, and more effective than say airborn anthrax spores...

l33t73322732• 3 years ago

Can anyone weigh in with information as to how insulated this is from being overbearing and giving someone some form of immune deficiency syndrome?

DoreenMichele9• 3 years ago

I'm personally skeptical of the entire concept of autoimmune disease. I think something else is going on -- something other than the immune system losing its mind and attacking healthy tissue for no real reason.

If autoimmune disease is a flawed concept, then treating it this way could potentially go very bad places.

DubiousPusher6• 3 years ago

Well, considering that current treatments for these diseases involve a broad based suppression of the immune system which lead to substantial increases risk from routine infection, they would have to be pretty bad to do worse than the current standard of care.

For example, the near state-of-the-art in immune suppression is the IL-17 inhibitor. IL-17 itself is a crucial signaller for Cytokine production. And it signals a broad array of Citokines. Citokines are essential in fighting most forms of infection. So, to have side effects as bad as a modern immune suppressant, an "inverse vaccine" would have to have a generalized effect as bad as global Citokine suppression. That would be an extraordinary leap for a drug which is meant to tell T cells to ignore one specific molecule.

refurb4• 3 years ago

This is using the body’s own mechanism to develop tolerance to an antigen that is recognized as “self”. Nothing would stop the body from developing an immune response at a later time.

thenerdhead• 3 years ago

Anyone have context as to how the name came to be? When I think of inverse vaccine, I think of something that gives you a disease. This is suggestive of erasing memory instead.

Super exciting work nonetheless.

pazimzadeh3• 3 years ago

Because immune tolerance is the opposite of immune protection, when it comes to the adaptive immune system, whose business is deciding what to do the next time it encounters an antigen (it's a memory response either way).

But really what they found here should maybe be called an inverse vaccine adjuvant (the part of the vaccine which tells your immune system that the associated antigen is dangerous, and a protective response should be mounted to it)

rockinghigh2• 3 years ago

Vaccines activate the immune system. Inverse vaccine suppress it.

tomohawk• 3 years ago

The new “inverse vaccine” does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule

Very cool, but what would happen if that molecule was small pox?

dogsgobork• 3 years ago

Since smallpox was eradicated over 40 years ago and most people alive today have not been vaccinated against it, I doubt it would matter much.

bitwize• 3 years ago

Smallpox is one heist away from being unleashed on the world again, if that. And with most people unvaccinated, well... there's your bioweapon.

JonathonW• 3 years ago

The US and Europe haven't vaccinated for smallpox since the early '70s and routine vaccination wrapped up globally in the mid-'80s, so, for many... absolutely nothing.

hinkley2• 3 years ago

I used to be amused when period pieces would show actresses (particularly European) in sleeveless attire with their smallpox vaccine scar, three feet tall in the closeup shots.

Turns out smallpox vaccines are a lot older than I thought. They might have not looked exactly like that in Victorian England, but an iteration of it did already exist. Guess that's why they cover up tattoos but not smallpox scars.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

Good question!

s/small pox/a marker for a harmful agent/

h2odragon• 3 years ago

smallpox is a bit more than a molecule.

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

More generally, if you told the immune system to ignore a still existing disease, it would probably be defenseless if/when you actually got infected by it.

Or could the immune system maybe override this if you got really sick?

samus• 3 years ago

Add I understand it, it's not about actively ignoring something. Rather, the immune system somehow learned to react more strongly to specific antigens, and undoing that. The natural immune reaction should still happen when encountering diseases, and not when encountering normal body tissues.

It's possible to use such tricks to actively shut down the immune system, but you either have to incorporate it into the disease (which actually happens in nature) or take that medicine continuously.

XorNot• 3 years ago

Wow. This is a big deal: autoimmune diseases are one of the hardest to treat.

The same strategy presumably could be applied for something like Crohn's disease. And I guess at a long shot, might work if IBS has an autoimmune component.

malfist• 3 years ago

Wonder if it could treat arthritis? It like another commenter said, allergies.

abracadaniel• 3 years ago

Another article on this mentioned both as possible uses for this. They called out rheumatoid arthritis in particular. There's lots of diseases with autoimmune components, that this could be a game changer for. I'm cautiously optimistic.

rendleflag• 3 years ago

I wonder if this could be used to address allergies as well.

bawolff• 3 years ago

Isn't this already how we address allergies?

Riseed2• 3 years ago

Allergy shots include the small amounts of the allergen, given in such doses as to allow the immune system to build a tolerance to the allergen. [0][1] It reminds me of psychology's "exposure therapy". [2] In layman's terms, allergy shots teach the immune system to chill, whereas this "inverse vaccine" (as I understand it) deletes a substance from the immune system's memory.

[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/allergy-shots/ab...

[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/25194-aller...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy

mabbo• 3 years ago

If there's such an easy biological mechanism to indicate "this one is fine", then I'm surprised it isn't being exploited by infectious agents already.

Imagine a virus that causes cells to also produce proteins that tell the immune system the virus is a friend.

EwanG• 3 years ago

I seem to recall that this is a known "side effect" of measles where it removes many immunities if you catch it.

ccooffee• 3 years ago

Here's a 2019 article, "Study suggests how measles depletes body’s immune memory"[0] which (despite the title) seems to quantify the percentage of antibody arsenal that is lost after a measles infection. Sadly, I haven't had luck finding resources to answer "by what mechanism does measles cause antibody memory to be lost?", but I've got a good thing to ponder for the weekend. Thanks. :)

[0] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/10/how-measles-w...

pazimzadeh3• 3 years ago

There are many such signals and they are already being exploited by pathogens. Such things are also exploited by tumors. That's why figuring out hard basic immunology problems like transplantation (while managing associated infections) will probably generate knowledge that is likely to help cure cancer, and vice versa. A lot of the time glycans (sugars) are a key part of what makes something look like self vs non-self.

Regulatory T cells and infection: a dangerous necessity https://www.nature.com/articles/nri2189

Sialic acid utilization by bacterial pathogens https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/1...

Hallmarks of glycosylation in cancer https://www.oncotarget.com/article/8155/text/

DoreenMichele9• 3 years ago

Trypanosomas change their protein markers to hide from the immune system. My recollection is this is why you can't create a vaccine for them.

refurb4• 3 years ago

There already are diseases that hide from the immune system, things like hepatitis B, herpes, shingles.

It’s nothing new.

Etrnl_President2• 3 years ago

Could we vaccinate Herpes to forget how to latch on to cells?

jokowueu• 3 years ago

Some gut parasites release immunosuppressants to protect themselves , it's also actively being traild on humans who suffer from autoimmune gut diseases

tcbawo• 3 years ago

I hope this will be useful in treating food allergies. It also seems to be potentially scary to be attempting inverse vaccines while our understanding of the mechanics of immunity are so limited.

db1234• 3 years ago

Looks like the same team is already looking into treating food allergies with inverse vaccine https://foodallergyfund.org/research-1/2021/2/15/inverse-foo....

dhbradshaw• 3 years ago

Wow, if this is real and practical it could be huge! Right up there with sanitation, nutrition, antibiotics and vaccines.

qvrjuec• 3 years ago

I remember reading discussions about mRNA vaccines being created to sensitize against immune system molecules, like in the way that Dupixent is just a monoclonal antibody that works against certain interleukins. So many interesting things out there for people with autoimmune diseases!

prvc• 3 years ago

Another application: erasing original antigenic sin.

tasty_freeze• 3 years ago

I can already hear keyboards clacking away of fiction authors writing books of intrigue about this technology coming to fruition. Russia weaponizes it by creating a virus that has been engineered to emit variations of this knock-out molecule, making the recipient able to get sick again from a host of common illnesses. All Russian citizens have been given immunity from this new virus before it is unleashed on the world. Within weeks, nobody is immune from measles, chicken pox, mumps, etc. A huge wave of sickness envelops the world, giving Russia the upper hand as the militia of all its enemies are desperately ill.

sputr2• 3 years ago

As an owner of a rare "MS-like disease" aka MOGAD I cant wait. The point of this treatment is that if you know which protein is the trigger you can stop it. It's probably not a cure, but an even better alternative to the current treatments that all cause at least some side effects or are not entirely effective.

I should note that I know of active phase 2 trials by other campanies for type 1 diabetes.

consp• 3 years ago

I should note that I know of active phase 2 trials by other campanies for type 1 diabetes

For those less informed and unfortunate owners of this malice, can you elaborate?

sputr2• 3 years ago

Yeah, sorry, was on my phone.

I've been following this company: http://imcyse.com/pipeline#type-1-diabetes

First, disclaimer, I'm a patient (MOGAD), not a medical professional. As far as phases goes, as far as I understand it, phase 1 is safety, phase 2 is initial trial for efficacy.

Quote from the website about Type 1 diabetes:

In Type 1 diabetes (T1D), the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed through an autoimmune attack. The loss of beta cells leads to insulin insufficiency and hyperglycemia, with patients eventually requiring lifelong insulin therapy to maintain normal glycemic control.

...

IMCY-0098, a synthetic peptide based on insulin (one of the proteins to which the body begins to mount an aberrant immune response) is designed to halt the progression of diabetes by stopping the body’s immune system from attacking beta cells. With early intervention, the pancreas’ ability to produce insulin may be preserved, enabling patients to manage the disease with minimal insulin injections and hopefully in some cases without the need for insulin at all.
In a Phase 1b study with 41 newly diagnosed patients, IMCY-0098, was found to be safe and well tolerated, with steady levels of C-peptides detected in some T1D patients up to 6 months following treatment, providing an encouraging signal for the Imotope™ platform.
IMCY-0098 is currently being investigated in a Phase 2 multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose comparison study in patients with recent onset T1D. .... The study completed recruitment in March 2023 exceeding its recruitment target, with a total of 110 patients enrolled and randomized across 28 clinical sites in Europe, the United States and Australia. Efficacy proof-of-concept data from IMPACT is expected in Q1 2024.

jvdvegt• 3 years ago

I can see how this works for slow autoimmune diseases mentioned in the article. But I suppose using it for fast autoimmune diseases is more difficult (thinking about Guillaume Barré Syndrome in particular, which can get you to an IC in 48 hours).

dharma1• 3 years ago

When anti-antivaccine demonstrations? In all seriousness, fantastic news.

There is no cure for autoimmune diseases atm, although some promising research in disease modifying drugs like https://www.kennedy.ox.ac.uk/news/new-drug-offers-hope-for-p...

This sounds like a far more targeted approach that could work for most autoimmune diseases (maybe even allergies?)

b3nji• 3 years ago

Now, is this going to be "safe and effective", and kill and mame people, or actually work?

“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat MS and other autoimmune diseases

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