Longevity science

An international team of scientists has recently reported success in the first phase of clinical trials in which MS victims’ immune systems were conditioned to become much more tolerant of myelin.\

In the study, white blood cells were obtained from nine MS-afflicted test subjects. These cells were specially processed, coupled with myelin antigens, and then injected intravenously back into their respective donors – up to 3 billion of these dead, treated cells were injected into each person.

When they entered the spleen, which filters dead cells from the bloodstream, both the white blood cells themselves and their myelin antigen payloads were identified by the body as being innocuous. This caused the immune system to become 50 to 75 percent less reactive to myelin, depending on the person and the number of cells injected.

Researchers demonstrated that a molecule called ‘transforming growth factor beta’ helps regulate immune function in the human body in both directions.

This molecule mainly helps suppress immune response when needed, but has now also been seem to boost immune response under certain conditions.

Diagnosed with advanced lung cancer over a year ago, Gabe Tartaglia was loath to undergo the kind of harsh chemotherapy that had devastated his sister before her death three years earlier from pancreatic cancer.

He decided to enter a clinical trial for a new drug designed to trigger the immune system to fight cancer. The results were better than anyone expected.

A clinical trial testing a gene therapy for HIV patients is now 11 years old. Recently, the researchers running the study published an examination of the patients after all this time.

Of the study’s 43 patients, all were healthy, and 41 of them confirmed that their immune cells which received a genetically-altered boost were still performing as hoped more than a decade after the initial infusions...