Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Andreas Lutterotti, Thomas Ludersdorfer, María José Docampo, Muriel Morax, Helen Hayward-Koennecke, Pietro Oldrati, Vasileia Kalaitzaki, Zoe Marti, Angela Zaugg, Mattias Bronge, Olivia G. Thomas, Filipa Marques Ferreira, Carla Sellés Moreno, Carolina Cruciani, Reza Naghavian, Jacobo Sarabia del Castillo, Laure Tillé, Markus Reindl, Pavlos C. Englezou, René Stenger, Ilijas Jelcic, Nikolai Pfender, Marc Hilty, Magdalena Foege, Federica Guffanti, Verena Weichselbaumer, Alain Blanc, Thorsten Buch, Martin Hüllner, Sebastian Winklhofer, Valerie Treyer, Jeroen S. Goede, Martin Behe, Massimo Broggini, Eugenio Scanziani, Tomas Olsson, Hans Grönlund, Maria Pia Sormani, Martin Kayser, Mireia Sospedra
Inducing antigen-specific immune tolerance is a long-standing aim in organ-specific autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis (MS). We developed a therapy based on autologous red blood cells (RBCs) as tolerizing carriers of autoantigens and tested these in an open-label, dose-escalation, phase Ib clinical trial with clinical, imaging, and mechanistic readouts. RBCs coupled with seven immunodominant myelin peptides (pcRBCs) were safe and well tolerated. Several clinical and imaging readouts remained stable, w …