The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) opened the OPTIMAL Study for liver transplant recipients at the first clinical site, the University of California, San Francisco on Monday, October 26, 2015. The OPTIMAL Study (Operational Tolerance Biomarkers of Immune Senescence and Lymphocyte Exhaustion Following Adult Liver Transplantation) will enroll 60 adult liver transplant recipients.
A potential biomarker of tolerance in kidney transplant recipients was found to be stable for up to three years in a cohort of 32 operationally tolerant kidney recipients from the ITN’s FACTOR study. The signature is characterized by the increased expression of two genes associated with B cells, suggesting a potential role of B cells in regulating the immune response to the kidney.
The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) completed enrollment this week for the IMPACT Study in peanut allergy.
Long-term safety and efficacy results of the Edmonton Protocol for islet transplantation were reported October 3, 2015 in the American Journal of Transplantation. Data from the Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) EXIIST Study (Extended Immunosuppression in Islet Transplantation), led by Dr.
Jerry Nepom, MD, PhD, director of the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) and Jonathan Corren, MD, protocol chair for the ITN’s CATNIP Study, were recently interviewed by Tracie Hotchner from the Radio Pet Lady Network.
On August, 31, 2015, interim guidance on the early introduction of peanut for the prevention of peanut allergy based on ITN’s “Learning Early About Peanut Allergy” LEAP Study was published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
The ITN is currently inviting proposals for novel clinical trials with the aim of inducing tolerance in patients who receive gene/protein-replacement (e.g. hemophilia, Gaucher’s disease) or other exogenous protein therapy, in which the patients are at risk for developing an immune response to the biologic agent. The ideal proposal would have a testable mechanism of tolerance induction and a strategy for assays investigating this mechanism.
Individuals with new-onset type 1 diabetes who took two courses of alefacept (Amevive®, Astellas Pharma Inc.) soon after diagnosis show preserved beta cell function after two years compared to those who received a placebo. The positive results of the Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) T1DAL study [Inducing Remission in New Onset T1DM with Alefacept (Amevive®)], led by Mark Rigby, MD, PhD, of Indiana University were published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The results of the Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) “Learning Early About Peanut” (LEAP) study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that consumption of a peanut-containing snack by infants who are at high-risk for developing peanut allergy prevents the subsequent development of allergy.
On Monday the ITN opened a new pilot study to compare two different methods for assessing allergic responses: environmental exposure chambers and nasal allergen challenges. The CAT EEC study, “Cat Pilot Study – Environmental Exposure Chamber (EEC) vs. Nasal Allergen Challenge (NAC),” is being conducted at Inflamax Research, Inc. in Ontario, Canada and led by Drs.