Washington, DC - Three-year outcomes from an ongoing clinical trial suggest that high-dose immunosuppressive therapy followed by transplantation of a person's own blood-forming stem cells may induce sustained remission in some people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). RRMS is the most common form of MS, a progressive autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord.
Last Friday the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) opened a new combination therapy study in lupus nephritis, CALIBRATE, at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The CALIBRATE Study will be led by Drs. Betty Diamond (North Shore Feinstein Institute), David Wofsy (UCSF), Cynthia Aranow (North Shore Feinstein Institute), and Maria Dall’Era (UCSF), and will test a novel regimen of rituximab (Rituxan, Genentech, Inc.) followed by belimumab (BENLYSTA®, GlaxoSmithKline) in patients with refractory lupus nephritis.
The results of the ACCESS study, “Abatacept and Cyclophosphamide Combination Therapy for Lupus Nephritis” sponsored by the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) and led by Drs.
On Wednesday, October 8th the ITN opened the CATNIP study, “Anti-TSLP plus antigen-specific immunotherapy for induction of tolerance in individuals with cat allergy,” at the first site, the University of Wisconsin. CATNIP will test whether a novel therapeutic approach, cat immunotherapy combined with an investigational new drug called MEDI9929/AMG 157 (an anti-TSLP antibody being co-developed by Amgen and Medimmune) can lead to lasting tolerance to cat allergen.
A White Paper published yesterday in Transplantation (co-authored by ITN Deputy Director Larry Turka, MD) outlines recommendations from an international workshop convened by The Transplantation Society (TTS) to determine the necessary steps to make tolerance protocols a standard of care for transplant over the next decade. To date three academic centers have employed successful tolerance-inducing protocols in kidney transplant recipients (Stanf
The Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) TrialShare Clinical Trials Research Portal (www.ITNTrialShare.org) has won the National Academy of Sciences Data and Information Challenge. The theme of this year’s competition, launched and judged by the academy’s Board on Research Data and Information (BDRI), was “Using Data for the Public Good.”
The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) is currently seeking proposals for clinical tolerance trials in transplantation using solid organs or islets from deceased donors.
Proposals should meet the following criteria:
The ITN is hosting a Member Society Symposium entitled “Mechanisms of Tolerance” on June 25th, 2014 (12:45-pm-4:45pm CT) during the annual Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) meeting in Chicago, IL. The symposium features talks on emerging hypotheses of immune tolerance mechanisms:
Engrafting Tolerance using Hematopoeitic Stem Cells |
An article published last week in Disease Models and Mechanisms by Dawn Smilek, MD, PhD, Mario Ehlers, MD, PhD, and Jerry Nepom, MD, PhD, provides a review of mechanisms involved in the disruption of tolerance to self-antigens in autoimmune disease, highlighting where those mechanisms can be targeted as a means of restoring tol