{"id":117395,"date":"2020-12-19T18:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T02:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/genetically-engineered-t-cells-could-lead-to-therapies-for-autoimmune-diseases"},"modified":"2020-12-19T18:00:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T02:00:54","slug":"genetically-engineered-t-cells-could-lead-to-therapies-for-autoimmune-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/genetically-engineered-t-cells-could-lead-to-therapies-for-autoimmune-diseases","title":{"rendered":"Genetically engineered T cells could lead to therapies for autoimmune diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A new study has found that a novel T cell genetically engineered by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers is able to target and attack pathogenic T cells that cause Type 1 diabetes, which could lead to new immunotherapy treatments.<\/p>\n

The immune system fights bacteria, viruses and other pathogens by utilizing several types of T cells<\/a>, all of which have receptors that are specific to particular antigens. On killer T cells, the receptor works in concert with three signaling modules and a coreceptor to destroy the infected cell<\/a>. Michael Kuhns, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UArizona College of Medicine\u2014Tucson Department of Immunobiology, copied the evolutionary design to engineer a five-module chimeric antigen receptor<\/a>, or 5MCAR, T cell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 5MCAR was an attempt to figure out if we could build something by biomimicry, using some of evolution\u2019s natural pieces, and redirect T cells to do what we want them to do. We engineered a 5MCAR that would direct killer T cells to target autoimmune T cells that mediate Type 1 diabetes,\u201d said Dr. Kuhns, who is member of the UArizona Cancer Center, BIO5 Institute and Arizona Center on Aging. \u201cSo now, a killer T cell will actually recognize another T cell. We flipped T cell-mediated immunity on its head.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study has found that a novel T cell genetically engineered by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers is able to target and attack pathogenic T cells that cause Type 1 diabetes, which could lead to new immunotherapy treatments. The immune system fights bacteria, viruses and other pathogens by utilizing several types of T [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,385,412,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}