Adoptive Treg cell-based immunotherapy: Frontier therapeutic aspects in rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

The major current focus on treating rheumatoid arthritis is to put an end to long-term treatments and instead, specifically block widespread immunosuppression by developing antigen-specific tolerance, while also permitting an intact immune response toward other antigens to occur. There have been promising preclinical findings regarding adoptive Treg cells immunotherapy with a critically responsible function in the prevention of autoimmunity, tissue repair and regeneration, which make them an attractive candidate to develop effective therapeutic approaches to achieve this interesting concept in many human immune-mediated diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Ex vivo or invivo manipulation protocols are not only utilized to correct Treg cells defect, but also to benefit from their specific immunosuppressive properties by identifying specific antigens that are expressed in the inflamedjoint. The methods able to address these deficiencies can be considered as a target for immunity interventions to restore appropriate immune function.

Keywords: Foxp3; Treg; Treg cell immunotherapy; Treg cell modulation; adoptive cell therapy; expansion of Treg cell; immunotherapy; induced antigen-specific Treg cell; regulatory T cell; rheumatoid arthritis.