Tuesday, January 23, 2007
autoimmunity, MS, IL-17....no no, it's actually nice.
So.
classical vaccines by definition are these things (live, dead, subunit, viral, bacterial etc. things) that ultimately help the immune system increase its response to an invading entity. And based on what i just said, as our teacher was saying the other day, the word vaccination, until now, belonged to us microbiologists. I say until now because vaccination can now go further than it has gone in the past in that it can (potentially) protect and or cure/treat us against two other types of diseases : cancers and autoimmune diseases. A hypothetical vaccine against a given tumor can serve to prime the immune system and help it attack that specific tumor. But since i want to focus on autoimmunity, that is all that i will say about cancer vaccination.
Autoimmune diseases are pretty nuts...almost kinda literally. They happen when the immune system attacks its own host. I.e. when the immue cells react and attach a specific tissue or organ or cell or cell product within the body. Examples of this include psoriasis, rheumatoid arthiritis, certain types of diabetes, lupus (i think), Mya-something-Gravis, colitis, crohn's and perhaps the most popular one, multiple sclerosis. Asthma and allergies can sometimes be put in the same category in terms of treatment since they also pivot around immune modulation irregularities.
let's focus on MS for now. I still have to read up on MS pathology to refresh my memory and give you the correct terms but the basics of pathogenesis here are as such: The immune system somehow ends up over reacting to a protein in the brain. Despite severe brain access restriction imposed on immune cells by the blood brain barrier, somehow, some of these self-reactive cells (let's not go into who is the main culprit here exactly but let's say it is a Th1 dominated response (i'll explain later)) get in the brain, cause inflamation and all sorts of other damage and hence a disease is born.
Standard therapy against MS is usually the use of immunosuppressants (that's all I know about it. sorry)
So here is where autoimmune vaccination comes into play. Now at a first glance, vaccinating against an autoimmune disease seems completely counter-intuitive right? because as we said vaccination is an immune booster and in an autoimmune disease we have too much of a immune response. so it seems that vaccination would just fuel the fire yes?
I have two scenarios to explain to you which will address the aforementioned concern.
1) The acquired immune response is classicaly divided into two branches: Th1 and Th2. Let's not get into what the role of each branch is right now (too long to explain and too many things that i don't remember exactly and will have to look up). For our purposes, it is sufficient to say that MS is modulated by a Th1 response. So, if MS progression needs Th1, if we find a way to modulate the immune response away from Th1 and towards Th2, well, we might alleviate the disease. That is all i am going to say about that for now.
2) This second scenario is what i just learned about today so i will be more specific. Interleukins are these little molecules that cells send out to communicate with each other and tell each other what to do. There are hundreds of them along with cytokines and chemokines which basically do the same thing. Each of these "messenger particles" have a specific purpose. The amount of their production and release, along with their location, as well as their combination with other messengers will result in variable immune responses ( they controle things like vasodilation (i think), inflammation, Th1 va Th2 favoring, immune tolerance and activation).
It turns out that this interleukin, called IL-17 promotes early inflamation. Remember inflamation, or too much inflamation plays a big role in causing MS. So this IL-17 can potentially play a big role in promoting MS. So hypothetically blocking it may reduce the autoimmune response that causes this disease.
I have to go now. But next time, i'll explain the papers that i read that confirm this last statement. and then we can talk about the risks.
My laptop is getting hot now and it's burning my wrists. Narges is coming over. I predict Tea Time. Yes. I am listening to Cat Power now. I can't find my Karajan festival CD nor the guarantee for my mp3 player which stopped working this week. how can i lose things in a space this small and transparent...and organized?
classical vaccines by definition are these things (live, dead, subunit, viral, bacterial etc. things) that ultimately help the immune system increase its response to an invading entity. And based on what i just said, as our teacher was saying the other day, the word vaccination, until now, belonged to us microbiologists. I say until now because vaccination can now go further than it has gone in the past in that it can (potentially) protect and or cure/treat us against two other types of diseases : cancers and autoimmune diseases. A hypothetical vaccine against a given tumor can serve to prime the immune system and help it attack that specific tumor. But since i want to focus on autoimmunity, that is all that i will say about cancer vaccination.
Autoimmune diseases are pretty nuts...almost kinda literally. They happen when the immune system attacks its own host. I.e. when the immue cells react and attach a specific tissue or organ or cell or cell product within the body. Examples of this include psoriasis, rheumatoid arthiritis, certain types of diabetes, lupus (i think), Mya-something-Gravis, colitis, crohn's and perhaps the most popular one, multiple sclerosis. Asthma and allergies can sometimes be put in the same category in terms of treatment since they also pivot around immune modulation irregularities.
let's focus on MS for now. I still have to read up on MS pathology to refresh my memory and give you the correct terms but the basics of pathogenesis here are as such: The immune system somehow ends up over reacting to a protein in the brain. Despite severe brain access restriction imposed on immune cells by the blood brain barrier, somehow, some of these self-reactive cells (let's not go into who is the main culprit here exactly but let's say it is a Th1 dominated response (i'll explain later)) get in the brain, cause inflamation and all sorts of other damage and hence a disease is born.
Standard therapy against MS is usually the use of immunosuppressants (that's all I know about it. sorry)
So here is where autoimmune vaccination comes into play. Now at a first glance, vaccinating against an autoimmune disease seems completely counter-intuitive right? because as we said vaccination is an immune booster and in an autoimmune disease we have too much of a immune response. so it seems that vaccination would just fuel the fire yes?
I have two scenarios to explain to you which will address the aforementioned concern.
1) The acquired immune response is classicaly divided into two branches: Th1 and Th2. Let's not get into what the role of each branch is right now (too long to explain and too many things that i don't remember exactly and will have to look up). For our purposes, it is sufficient to say that MS is modulated by a Th1 response. So, if MS progression needs Th1, if we find a way to modulate the immune response away from Th1 and towards Th2, well, we might alleviate the disease. That is all i am going to say about that for now.
2) This second scenario is what i just learned about today so i will be more specific. Interleukins are these little molecules that cells send out to communicate with each other and tell each other what to do. There are hundreds of them along with cytokines and chemokines which basically do the same thing. Each of these "messenger particles" have a specific purpose. The amount of their production and release, along with their location, as well as their combination with other messengers will result in variable immune responses ( they controle things like vasodilation (i think), inflammation, Th1 va Th2 favoring, immune tolerance and activation).
It turns out that this interleukin, called IL-17 promotes early inflamation. Remember inflamation, or too much inflamation plays a big role in causing MS. So this IL-17 can potentially play a big role in promoting MS. So hypothetically blocking it may reduce the autoimmune response that causes this disease.
I have to go now. But next time, i'll explain the papers that i read that confirm this last statement. and then we can talk about the risks.
My laptop is getting hot now and it's burning my wrists. Narges is coming over. I predict Tea Time. Yes. I am listening to Cat Power now. I can't find my Karajan festival CD nor the guarantee for my mp3 player which stopped working this week. how can i lose things in a space this small and transparent...and organized?
New deadline= new energy
I just found out that i have to give a presentation next week for my reading and conference class. The topic i chose is the potential to develop vaccines against autoimmune diseases such as MS. This is an interesting topic. I thought i had till march to work on it but now that I only have till next wednesday, you are going to hear alot about it in the next few days.
So far my focus is on MS, and the Th17 T cell subset, and hopefully DNA vaccines. We'll see how things develop...
right now, i go do yoga before i start my work. yesterday I did the half moon stretch which is pretty hard...it made me giggle.
ok.
So far my focus is on MS, and the Th17 T cell subset, and hopefully DNA vaccines. We'll see how things develop...
right now, i go do yoga before i start my work. yesterday I did the half moon stretch which is pretty hard...it made me giggle.
ok.
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