AstraZeneca's CAR-T Therapy Shows 60% Symptom Relief in Lupus Trial

AstraZeneca (AZN.US) has announced that a subset of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), commonly known as lupus, showed symptom relief after receiving an experimental CAR-T cell therapy. This breakthrough comes as the British pharmaceutical giant has poured billions into the CAR-T cell therapy sector, aiming to revolutionize the treatment of various diseases, including autoimmune disorders.

The therapy, acquired through AstraZeneca's purchase of a Chinese biotech company, is currently in the early stages of clinical trials. However, a small-scale trial conducted in Shanghai on 10 young volunteers, whose conditions were not controlled by early treatments, yielded significant results. Preliminary findings indicate that six out of the ten participants did not exhibit lupus symptoms nine months after receiving a single injection of the therapy.

AstraZeneca is among several pharmaceutical companies betting on the potential of CAR-T cell therapy to alter the course of autoimmune diseases, where the immune system attacks the body instead of defending it. While the therapy has so far been approved only for certain types of blood cancer, its success could pave the way for patients with lupus, multiple sclerosis, or rheumatoid arthritis to move from symptom management to recovery.

This is not the first instance of a company achieving notable results in treating lupus with CAR-T therapy. The optimism surrounding this approach is bolstered by a groundbreaking study from the academic laboratory of Georg Schett in Germany, which showed that five patients experienced symptom relief in 2022. Currently, numerous biotechnology companies and academic institutions are working to bring this therapy to market, with over 100 cell therapy studies for autoimmune diseases underway.

Companies like CRISPR Therapeutics and Fate Therapeutics are developing "off-the-shelf" therapies, which use donor cells instead of the patient's own cells to produce the drug. Other firms, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Autolus Therapeutics, Cartesian Therapeutics, and Novartis, are also testing CAR-T drugs for autoimmune diseases. However, the current research scale is small, and it remains unclear whether the observed symptom relief will be sustained over time.