'Master Key' for New Treatments for Autoimmune Disorders

[MBombardier]

Here's another one:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 122858.htm

Imagine a single drug that would treat most, if not all, autoimmune disorders, such as asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and Lupus. That might not be so hard to do thanks to a team of researchers who have discovered a molecule normally used by the body to prevent unnecessary immune reactions. This molecule, pronounced "alpha v beta 6," normally keeps our immune systems from overreacting when food passes through our bodies, and it may be the key that unlocks entirely new set of treatments for autoimmune disorders.

This is probably overstated, but it would be really great if there is merit for this enthusiasm:

"Development of new treatments and cures for diseases is usually a long process involving a series of incremental steps taken from the laboratory all the way through to the patient's bedside," said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. "Occasionally, however, scientists make large leaps forward instead. While considerable work remains to determine whether or not this discovery will directly translate into new therapies, the alphavbeta6 discovery reported by these scientists is exciting, if not stunning."

[tex]

Interesting. I don't understand why it will take so much time and work to figure out whether something so simple will work on a practical level, though. It sounds as though, like most researchers, they just want to research it for another 20 or 30 years. Job security seems to be the primary consideration.

This concept has been basically understood for many years. From 1999:

This finding explains why mice lacking this integrin develop exaggerated inflammation and, as we show, are protected from pulmonary fibrosis. These data identify a novel mechanism for locally regulating TGF beta 1 function in vivo by regulating expression of the alpha v beta 6 integrin.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10025398

The alpha v beta 6 integrin is also being studied in cancer research:

The alpha v beta 6 integrin is a promising target for cancer therapy. Its expression is up-regulated de novo on many types of carcinoma where it may activate transforming growth factor-beta 1 and transforming growth factor-beta 3, interact with the specific extracellular matrix proteins and promote migration and invasion of tumor cells.

https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/research/browse/ ... ource_id=3

IOW, these researchers are proposing suppressing the alpha v beta 6 integrin in order to fight cancer, because of this discovery in 1994:

Here we show that heterologous expression of alpha v beta 6 in a human colon carcinoma cell line (SW480) enhances the proliferative capacity of these cells, both in vitro and in vivo in nude mice.

Heterologous expression refers to the process of artificially injecting into a cell, a protein that is not normally produced by that cell. In most settings, the protein itself is not actually transferred. Instead, the desired DNA, (actually complementary DNA), is injected. IOW, this is a GMO process.

http://jcb.rupress.org/content/127/2/547.abstract

Thanks for the link,
Tex