Commencing January 2023, Professor Trevor Kilpatrick and Dr Vivien Li, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health University, were awarded a 3-year Trish Translational Research Project Grant of $250,000. Professor Kilpatrick and Dr Li’s Project is titled, “Advancing tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy for multiple sclerosis toward clinical translation”.
Their aim is to develop a new way to treat MS based on using patients’ own blood immune cells. These immune cells are treated with anti-inflammatory signals in the laboratory and then re-administered to the patient, where they selectively target and dampen down the disease-causing immune cells that promote inflammation and lead to nerve cell damage in MS. This approach has benefits over existing therapies as it targets key initiating events in MS and could treat all disease stages. The targeted cells can cross into the central nervous system to dampen down disease-causing immune cells that are otherwise hidden from current treatments.
This project will advance Professor Kilpatrick’s and Dr Li’s existing work towards clinical translation. They have already developed techniques to grow these immune cells from patient blood samples and defined culture conditions that can modify their behaviour to assume protective/anti-inflammatory rather than disease-inducing/pro-inflammatory characteristics. They have identified a relevant peptide involved in MS which can enable selective targeting of the disease-causing immune cells rather than broadly suppressing the immune system.
Using advanced immunological techniques, they have found that the frequency of immune cells that react to the identified peptide is higher in patients with MS compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, there was a higher proportion of cells with disease-inducing/pro-inflammatory characteristics. This peptide also stimulated division of the immune cells.
Professor Kilpatrick’s and Dr Li’s exciting work has been unavoidably delayed. They are finalising a collaboration agreement to develop these techniques into a potential cellular therapy.
We look forward to learning of further progress with this encouraging research.