Christina Krienke and colleagues have designed an mRNA vaccine that delayed onset and reduced the severity of multiple sclerosis-like diseases in mice. The vaccine restores the body ‘s susceptibility to its own proteins, eliminating the normal immune response of the disease. The vaccine developed by Krienke et al. works in a targeted way to promote tolerance to specific disease-related proteins, an improvement over other approaches in the treatment of the disease that causes systemic immune suppression that could leave a person vulnerable to other diseases. The vaccine is composed of a lipid nanoparticle filled with modified and pure mRNA that encodes disease-related autoimmune antigens that are usually the cause of an autoimmune response. In their experiments in mice with autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a mouse model for multiple human sclerosis, the researchers found that the vaccine caused the display of antigens on lymphoid dendritic cells without stimulating an inflammatory immune response. . This new antigen tolerance has led to an expansion of regulatory T cells that suppressed the autoimmune response against these types of antigens, and stimulated the inhibition of other T cells attacking proteins in myelin, the protective sheath around neural fibers that are destroyed in multiple sclerosis. The ability to produce mRNA vaccines in which the code for one’s own antigens may mark the pathway to the creation of personalized self-immune disease cures, the researchers suggest.
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