Symptoms for sixteen people with multiple sclerosis or other autoimmune conditions improved after receiving a treatment that produced disease-fighting immune cells inside their bodies, according to results1 from a small clinical trial. Researchers say the results are exciting but the treatment needs to be tested in more people. The latest trial, published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, used a modified virus to transfer genetic instructions for making chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on participants' immune cells, known as T cells. The CAR T cells target autoantibodies expressed by B cells, another type of immune cell, which attack the body's own healthy tissue in people with autoimmune diseases. 'This is a very exciting proof-of-concept study' for in vivo CAR-T-cell therapy, which is made inside the body, says David Simon, a clinician-researcher at the Charite ' University Medicine Berlin. In vivo therapy is cheaper and faster to produce than is conventional...
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