What is it about?
Autoimmune disease occurs when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. In multiple sclerosis (MS), myelin — the protective coating that surrounds nerves — is targeted, causing symptoms that include paralysis and cognitive deterioration. Our approach to combating autoimmunity uses biocompatible polymer particles that are designed to deliver signals directly to lymph nodes, where immune responses are programmed. Once there, they create a localized niche that retrains cells to become tolerant of myelin. This approach reverses paralysis in preclinical models of MS, reduces off-target effects, and improves treatment durability.
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Photo by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Unsplash
Why is it important?
There is no cure for MS, and available therapies that help alleviate symptoms can suppress other functions of the immune system and leave patients vulnerable to common infections or unable to receive certain vaccines. By selectively retraining immune cells to stop this attack, we achieve potent efficacy without suppressing the healthy parts of the immune system needed to fight infection. These results advance clinically feasible technologies that retrain specific immune responses toward translation that address autoimmune diseases with
Perspectives
“This study has been an incredible collaboration between my Lab, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Harvard University. We show that a single dose eliminates disease-induced lesions in the brain using a preclinical model of MS. We also show that this immunotherapy is safe in non-human primates. It’s super exciting!” - --Dr. Chris Jewell Institute Professor of Translational engineering “This kind of understanding of how autoimmunity can be retrained could help us engineer even more robust outcomes; and, excitingly, explore how these principles can be applied to treating other autoimmune diseases in addition to MS.” -Dr. Senta Kapnick
Chris Jewell
University of Maryland at College Park
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Local control of T cell fate in lymph nodes safely and durably reverses myelin-driven autoimmunity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2409563122.
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