Arthritis vaccine breakthrough claimed by Qld team

An Australian research team is claiming a breakthrough in developing a therapeutic vaccine against autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis.

The team's work, published today in the authoritative journal Immunity, suggests it may be the first to discover a molecular control mechanism for turning off pre-existing autoimmune diseases.

The 10-person team with the University of Queensland's Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane believes it has discovered a molecular pathway that can re-educate the immune system.

If so, it could mark a vital step toward finding a vaccine capable of curing patients with existing autoimmune diseases from arthritis and juvenile diabetes to multiple sclerosis.

The research has reached the stage of defining the pathway and showing that it can turn off pre-existing autoimmune diseases in mouse models, according to CICR deputy director and leader of its dendritic cell biology group, Assoc Prof Ranjeny Thomas.

"It is not a new idea to re-educate the immune system, but this is the first time it has been possible to suppress an existing response once the immune system has started down a deleterious pathway," she said.

The CICR team made its discovery while working with the dendritic cells, found in lymphoid organs, which prime the immune response by instructing T-cells how to respond to particular antigens.

The team turned off one of the key molecules in dendritric cells -- a transcription factor known as RelB -- which in turn suppresses T-cell activation and gives rise to a tolerant rather than inflammatory response.

The suppression mechanism is antigen-specific, meaning vaccines could be developed which target particular diseases or allergies.

Thomas has been pursuing vaccine research for the past five years, funded by the Arthritis Foundation of Queensland and the NHMRC.

The publication of the paper in Immunity is also a tacit announcement that the research has reached the stage of requiring commercial partners to proceed. Thomas said pre-seed funding was being actively sought for the project.

If the early promise of the research is sustained, human toxicity studies could commence by the end of 2003 or early 2004 with the start of human clinical trials possible within two years.

For the CICR, the announcement is the second time in recent months that it has attracted media attention for its work with vaccines. In November, an anti-cervical cancer vaccine based on work by another CICR group made world headlines following publication of extremely favourable human clinical trial results.