The research is being conducted under the direction of Femke Broere of Utrecht University. "We are extremely happy with this award," says Broere. "ReumaNederland gives us confidence and long-term investment in the development of a vaccine against inflammatory rheumatism." Earlier, half a million was also awarded for the collaboration with Prof Jaap van Laar (Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, UMC Utrecht).
Lasting cure
Great progress has been made in the treatment of inflammatory rheumatism in recent years. Yet no form of inflammatory rheumatism can be cured yet. Moreover, existing treatments sometimes suppress only part of the symptoms and sometimes have little effect on symptoms such as extreme fatigue and pain."We aim for a permanent cure without additional medication. That is the challenge," says Broere, who is a professor of translational immunology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. "We are developing special vaccines to ensure that the body itself can inhibit rheumatoid arthritis without the need for lifelong medication. This is called tolerogenic vaccination. In recent decades, our research has led to a candidate vaccine consisting of cells from the patient himself; tolerogenic dendritic cells."
Collaboration
The vaccine is now being investigated in the first patients in a clinical trial. This is done in a collaboration with colleagues at UMC Utrecht and Radboud UMC. In Nijmegen, the required dendritic cells are being cultured by Prof Jolanda de Vries. In Utrecht, the clinical trial is taking place under the supervision of Prof Jaap van Laar. Van Laar: "We have now treated seven people to test the safety and feasibility. Studying the immune response to this vaccine in detail gives us the opportunity to develop new tests that will make it easier to measure the effect of therapeutic vaccination against rheumatoid arthritis in the future." This autumn, the researchers expect the first results when the first nine patients with arthritis have been treated.Broere: "In addition, the follow-up research will focus on new vaccines consisting of nanoparticles. This is because the current cell-based vaccine has to be made separately for each patient and is very expensive. Vaccines made from nanoparticles can be made on a large scale and are therefore accessible to more people. Using blood samples from rheumatoid arthritis patients, we will explore how medication affects vaccine efficacy."
About inflammatory rheumatism
Inflammatory rheumatism is a collective term for several autoimmune diseases. Inflammatory rheumatism occurs because the immune system sees healthy cells as evil invaders. The immune system attacks its own body, causing inflammation in joints. In some forms of rheumatism, inflammations also occur in the skin, muscles or organs. All people with rheumatoid arthritis suffer from fatigue and pain, difficulty with movement and major limitations in daily life.See a report made by the so-called Rheumareporter when the study was launched here:
Read the text on ReumaNederland here
