Sunday, July 10, 2016

Immunotherapy cuts heart disease risk in arthritis patients

Immunotherapy has the potential to reduce the risk of heart disease in patients suffering with rheumatoid arthritis, finds a study.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease in which cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFI) and interfero-gamma (IFN), which normally protect the body, attack healthy cells.

The findings showed that the combination of two anticytokines containing extra-low doses of antibodies against TNFI and IFN could improve the efficacy of standard rheumatoid arthritis therapy and decrease heart disease risk. 

 "In rheumatoid arthritis, patients have painful and inflamed joints. They are also at increased cardiovascular risk, particularly if their rheumatoid arthritis is not controlled," said a Professor.

 
Further, the patients taking the combination of anticytokines had a lower rheumatoid arthritis disease activity score, as measured by the DAS28,2 and more dramatic decreases in IL-1, IL-6 and TNF alpha than the group on standard therapy alone.

The incidence of cardiovascular events (unstable angina, severe hypertensive crisis, and deterioration of chronic heart failure) was more than double in the group on conventional disease-modifying drugs alone (37 per cent) compared to those also taking the combination of anticytokines (13 percent).

"Our findings suggest that the decreased rheumatoid arthritis disease activity with the combination of anticytokines translates into decreased cardiovascular risk," Prof. said. 

 Rheumatoid arthritis is also associated with dysfunction of the blood vessel lining (called endothelium), which leads to lipid accumulation in the artery wall, plaque formation and atherosclerosis.


"Thus, decreasing disease activity may also reduce cardiovascular risk by slowing down or halting these processes," he added.

For the study, the team included 68 patients who had suffered from active rheumatoid arthritis for at least five years.

Patients were randomised to receive the combination of anti-TNF alpha and anti-IFN gamma plus standard disease-modifying therapy (38 patients) or placebo plus standard therapy (30 patients). 


 We recommend this new approach for preventing cardiovascular events in patients with moderate disease activity who are not receiving the standard biologics and who do not have severe complications."

The research was presented at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2016 in Italy, recently. 


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Monday, July 15, 2013

Cancer cure comes closer to reality

A company  that has been able to develop a way to harness the power of the immune system’s natural-born killer cells: the T-cells of the blood that kill invading pathogens, like viruses and bacteria.

A chief scientific officer who began to study T-cells 20 years ago, said that immuno-therapy is radically different.

He said that his method doesn't do away with other cancer treatments by any means, and only adds something to the arsenal, though it may have one unique feature – it could have the ability to actually cure cancer.

Today almost all the cancer treatments are burdened with the problem of sparing the healthy tissue from irreparable harm while ensuring that every cancer cell is killed, deactivated or removed.

According to the researcher, many companies have tried developing cancer cures based on antibodies, but have had limited success.

He said that a part of the problem was that antibodies are not designed to recognise cells and his company built a therapy around the second arm of the immune system, called cellular immunity, where T-cells seek out and destroy invading pathogens.

They have devised a way to design small protein molecules, which is called ImmTACs, which act as double-ended glue. At one end ImmTACs stick to cancer cells, strongly and very specifically, and leave healthy cells untouched and at the other end they stick to T-cells.

The researcher said that they use scaffold of the T-cell receptor to make something that is very good at recognising cancer even if it doesn't exist naturally.

He asserted that although T-cells are not keen to recognise cancer, they force them to do so.



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