The Unmet Medical Need
Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. In Europe only there are, around 500,000 people suffering from this disease, which is often diagnosed in individuals (mostly women) aged 20 to 40. With increasing disability, this incurable disease greatly reduces quality of life for patients and imposes a high burden to the society in terms of cost of therapy and chronic need for care.
The introduction of disease-modifying therapies, based on anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive drugs, provided improvement in controlling the disease. However, the disadvantage of these therapies is that they may have adverse effects due to generalized immune suppression and must be given life-long to dampen inflammation and partially compensate for organ dysfunction.
There is a need for safe and effective new therapies for Multiple Sclerosis, which target the cause of disease, to reduce duration and frequency of treatments as well as limiting side-effects.
Proposed Solution & Mission
While most therapies act to counter the effector stage of disease (e.g., systemic treatment of inflammation), curative therapies need to target factors that induce and/or maintain disease. Promising in this respect are therapies that target only the detrimental immune response against disease-associated antigen (Ag)s. These approaches are known as Ag-specific therapies.
We aim to fast-track the development and validation of an advanced therapeutic medicinal product, based on optimized Vitamin D3 (VitD3)-modified tolerogenic dendritic cells to treat patients with immune-mediated diseases. IMMUTOL will develop a more potent and durable treatment for autoimmune diseases with an unmet medical need, in particular Multiple Sclerosis.
IMMUTOL will pave the way for new tolerogenic cell-based therapies to cure/reverse several autoimmune conditions.
WHO WE ARE?
IMMUTOL consortium gathers experts and institutions from different sectors, from research institutions and academia, patients’ association to hospitals and corporate SME.
Meet the PIs
Silvia Gregori
Coordinator of IMMUTOL. Head of the Mechanisms of Peripheral Tolerance Unit at SR-Tiget.
Eva Martinez Caceres
Head of the Immunology Service at IGTP and full Professor of Immunology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Medical School.
Anja ten Brinke
Project coordinator and Scientific advisor Immunomonitoring Services and Group leader at department of Immunopathology at SQ.
Marieke van Ham
Professor of Biological Immunology, University of Amsterdam and Head department of Immunopathology at SQ.
Felipe Prosper Cardoso
Professor and Head of Cellular Therapy Unit and Co-director of Haematology and Haemotherapy Unit Haematology and Oncology Specialist at UNAV.
