Commencing January 2023, Professor Trevor Kilpatrick and Dr Vivien Li, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health were awarded a Translational Research Project Grant titled, “Advancing tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy for multiple sclerosis toward clinical translation”.
Professor Kilpatrick, Dr Li and their team aim 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 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, Dr Li and their team are also analysing whether a genetic risk factor associated with MS influences the anti-inflammatory characteristics of immune cells that can be generated from different individuals. This would allow stratification of potential candidates for this therapeutic approach.
They are collaborating with Cell Therapies, a company specialising in production of cellular therapies, to develop a pathway for generation of a clinical grade cellular product that could be used in clinical trial.
This important research was the subject of a poster presentation at ECTRIMS 2025 and two published manuscripts, with another manuscript submitted and under review and a further manuscript under preparation.
The team has used the outcomes and techniques from their work to apply for further grants.