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  • Year in Review
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Immunotherapies in 2023

The rise of precision cellular therapies

Advances in gene, protein and cellular engineering provide unprecedented opportunities to redirect immune cells to treat autoimmunity. In 2023, novel cellular and precision immunotherapies showed remarkable promise in the treatment of rheumatic diseases.

Key advances

  • B cell-targeted CAR T cell therapies can achieve prolonged clinical remission in various autoimmune diseases2,5.

  • Precision cellular therapies hold promise for selective, antigen-specific elimination of autoreactive B cells6.

  • TCR β-chain variable (TRBV)-targeted antibodies also show potential in T cell-mediated rheumatic diseases10.

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Fig. 1: Emerging immunotherapies for autoimmune and rheumatic diseases.

References

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  7. Feng, J., Hu, Y., Chang, A. H. & Huang, H. CD19/BCMA CAR-T cell therapy for refractory systemic lupus erythematosus - safety and preliminary efficacy data from a phase i clinical study. Blood 142, 4835–4835 (2023).

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  10. Paul, S. et al. TCR β chain–directed bispecific antibodies for the treatment of T cell cancers. Sci. Transl. Med. 13, eabd3595 (2021).

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Correspondence to Maximilian F. Konig.

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Competing interests

M.F.K. is a consultant to Argenx, Atara Biotherapeutics, Revel Pharmaceuticals, Sana Biotechnology and Sanofi. M.F.K. declares that he and The Johns Hopkins University have filed patent applications related to chimeric autoantigen-T cell receptor-T cell therapies and TCR region-targeting approaches.

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Konig, M.F. The rise of precision cellular therapies. Nat Rev Rheumatol 20, 69–70 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-023-01073-6

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