Revolutionizing Asthma Treatment: CAR-T Cell Therapy Shows Promising Results

A team of scientists from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China has developed a new treatment for asthma using CAR-T cells. The findings were published in the journal Nature Immunology and suggest a potential avenue for the development of long-term therapies for allergic asthma, a condition that affects over 300 million people worldwide and causes 250,000 deaths annually.

The CAR-T cell therapy involves modifying a patient’s T lymphocytes in a laboratory setting to recognize and combat specific cells involved in allergic asthma. In this study, the researchers targeted eosinophils, white blood cells involved in allergic immune responses. By blocking proteins that contribute to the condition’s pathology, the therapy was able to alleviate asthma symptoms in mice.

The modified CAR-T cells continued to prevent allergic immune responses in the mice for at least a year, suggesting long-lasting effects of the treatment. While further testing will need to be done on humans before it can be approved as a safe and effective treatment, this study introduces new opportunities for asthma therapy using CAR-T cells. José Gregorio Soto Campos, an expert in Pulmonology and Allergy, highlighted the high-quality research published in this study as it opens up new avenues for treating chronic asthma and potentially other allergic diseases.