Tolerogenic Cell-Based Therapy: Where We Stand 2.0?
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Immunology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 8877
Special Issue Editor
Interests: HLA-G; vitamin D3
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The development of novel approaches to control unwanted immune responses represents an ambitious goal in the management of a number of clinical conditions, including autoimmunity, autoinflammatory diseases, organ and cell transplantation allergies, as well as replacement therapies, in which the T-cell response to self, allogeneic, and nonharmful antigens threatens the physiological function of tissues and organs. Current treatments for these conditions rely on the use of nonspecific immunosuppressive agents and supportive therapies, which may efficiently dampen inflammation and compensate for organ dysfunction, but require lifelong treatments that are not devoid of cumbersome side effects. These limitations induced researchers to undertake the development of definitive and specific solutions to these disorders: the underlying principle of the novel approaches relies on the idea that empowering the tolerogenic arm of the immune system would restore the balance and control the disease.
Cell-based therapies are clinically attractive for promoting or restoring tolerance in T-cell-mediated diseases, as they can theoretically control several inflammatory cells, including T and B lymphocytes, NK cells and APCs, leading to the control of unwanted immune responses. Therapies based on the adoptive transfer of regulatory cells (T, macrophages, and tolerogenic (tol)DC) entered the clinical arena in recent years, with the goal of investigating the safety and feasibility of the approach, and several studies are still ongoing.
Despite encouraging results, a number of open questions remain before regulatory-based therapies can be routinely used to prevent graft rejection and treat or cure autoimmune diseases. Several open questions remain to be tackled when designing tolerogenic-based therapies: i) their potential to mediate pan immunosuppression in vivo, due to the phenomenon of bystander immune suppression; ii) the stability of the cell product to be infused must be evaluated for limitations to in vivo side effects or disease exacerbation; iii) the overall impact of long-lasting tolerogenic cells on infections and malignancies; iv) the necessity of multiple cell infusions to allow for the induction of the self-sustained mechanisms described above will invariably lead to high manufacturing costs; iv) the expansion/generation of autologous tolerogenic cells implies the use of patient-derived cells, which may not be as functional as those isolated from healthy subjects.
The purpose of this Research Topic is to define the current advances in understanding of the tolerogenic treatments based on cell products to modulate immune tolerance or autoimmunity. For this purpose, we particularly encourage studies on animal disease models or clinical trials, which will contribute to the future development of clinical treatments using tolerogenic cells to target human diseases.
Dr. Silvia Gregori
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- tolerance
- cell-based therapy
- autoimmune diseases
- organ transplantation
- graft-versus host disease
- regulatory T cells
- tolerogenic DC
- immunoregulation
