New ‘invisible’ stem cells treatment for heart disease, cancer and diabetes

Written by Ian Randall on January 10, 2021. Posted in Current News

Scientists have created ‘invisible’ stem cells that evade the immune system — thereby paving the way to new treatments for cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

The lab-grown cells — created by researchers from the US — could be used for cell therapies and tissue implants without fear of immune rejection.

They work by expressing so-called ‘checkpoints’ — the equivalent of a security pass for the cells which allow them to turn off the body’s ‘natural killer’ immune cells.

Stem cells can turn into any tissue or organ — but their potential for use in transplants has been limited by the risk of the host body attacking them.

As a cardiac surgeon, I would love to put myself out of business by being able to implant healthy cardiac cells to repair heart disease,’ said paper author Tobias Deuse of the University of California, San Francisco.

‘And there are tremendous hopes to one day have the ability to implant insulin-producing cells in patients with diabetes or to inject cancer patients with immune cells engineered to seek and destroy tumours.’

‘The major obstacle is how to do this in a way that avoids immediate rejection by the immune system.’

In their study, Dr Deuse and colleagues used gene editing tools on stem cells to create so-called ‘hypoimmune’ cells that the immune system can’t detect, either through its adaptive or innate defences.

They did this by granting the cells molecular passcodes that activate ‘checkpoints’ — the off-switches of the immune system that stop the body from attacking its own cells, while also modulating the intensity of desired immune responses.

Specifically, the team engineered their cells to express significant levels of a protein known as ‘CD47’, which activates ‘SIRPα’, a molecular switch which shuts down certain innate immune cells.

Read more at www.dailymail.co.uk

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