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| Professor Eric Morand |
A drug originally used to boost the immune system is showing
promise as a potential new treatment for lupus, research published today
(August 9) shows. Lupus is an autoimmune disease, where the immune system
attacks the body’s own organs and tissues, causing inflammation and,
potentially, organ failure.
An international team of scientists from Australia and China
have shown for the first time, in a study published today in Nature Medicine,
that a natural immune system protein called IL-2 can help restore balance to
the overactive immune system of lupus patients. The drug could soon be rolled
out for clinical trials in lupus treatment.
Professor Zhanguo Li from Peking University People’s
Hospital in China, and Monash
Biomedicine Discovery Institute researcher, Dr Di Yu, co-led the study.
Dr Yu said he hoped the drug could be approved as a lupus treatment
within a handful of years.
“This drug, which can help the immune system fight against cancer, was approved in the
1990s but is not commonly used now– we’re just using this drug for a different
purpose, based on our new knowledge of the immune system,” Dr Yu said.
“The amount we tested for treating lupus is much less than the
dose used in treating cancers. We observed the treatment was safe and showed
promising results, so there’s reason to believe formal trials could begin
almost immediately,” he said.
Dr Yu said lupus could be a serious disease, and that it hadn’t
been able to be treated in a very satisfactory way in the past.
“With the treatments available at the moment, many people
still have flare-ups on a regular basis, or serious side effects,” Dr Yu said.
IL-2 is a protein that regulates the activity of white blood
cells, which are an important
part of the immune system that protect the body against infections. In cancer
therapy, patients are given large doses of IL-2 to stimulate their immune
system but, paradoxically, the low dose IL-2 given to lupus sufferers in this
study actually supressed the overactive part of their immune system that attacks
their body. The research also showed the “self-checking” part of the immune
system that prevents an overactive immune response, called regulatory T cells, increased
after IL-2 treatment.
Dr Yu said: “This drug shows real promise for treating a
number of diseases when given in low doses. This is the first time IL-2 has
been studied as a treatment for a group of patients with lupus, and the results
are very encouraging.”
Professor Eric Morand, fellow Monash University researcher
on the study and founder of the Asia Pacific Lupus Collaboration, said that in
this study, IL-2 was given to people whose lupus wasn’t responding well to standard
treatments.
“The real promise of this treatment is that it calms the hyperactive
immune system through multiple mechanisms, which is very important as this new
therapy may be effective for many patients,” Professor Morand said.
”As the drug has been on the market for some time for other
diseases, it can be rapidly put into formal trials for lupus treatment right
away.”
Co-first authors Dr Xia Zhang from Peking University People’s Hospital in China, and Associate
Professor Yunbo Wei, from Shandong Academy of Sciences, performed a large part
of the research, both visiting Monash University to train with Dr Yu and carry out the research.
The researcher’s work was supported by several international
funding bodies, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the
Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Priority
Research Program of the Shandong Academy of Sciences.
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