Promising Treatment for Ulcerative Colitis: Innovative Bioengineered Approach Unveiled

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have come up with a new way to tackle ulcerative colitis by using a trick borrowed from cancer cells. The study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, suggests a promising strategy for treating not only ulcerative colitis but also other autoimmune conditions affecting millions of people globally. Senior author Dr. Andrew Wang, a Professor and Vice Chair of Translational Research at UT Southwestern, explained the approach: "We're borrowing something that cancer uses for evil and making it into something good." Dr. Wang, along with first author Dr. Kin Man Au, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, co-led the study. The immune system can usually identify and eliminate cancer cells, preventing most cancers from spreading. However, cancers can cleverly evade the immune system by producing proteins that suppress immune cell activity, allowing tumors to grow. On the flip side, autoimmune conditions occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells, thinking they are invaders. The researchers decided to turn this idea on its head, retraining the immune system to dial back its activity against specific cell types targeted in autoimmune diseases. This concept has been explored before in studies involving animal models of Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis. The current study focuses on ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease where the immune system attacks cells in the colon. Presently, there is no cure for ulcerative colitis or many other autoimmune diseases, and patients often rely on systemic immunosuppressors for treatment. However, these medications come with long-term health risks, including an elevated susceptibility to infections and cancer. By leveraging cancer's ability to evade the immune system, the researchers hope to develop a treatment that offers relief to those suffering from autoimmune conditions without the drawbacks associated with current therapies. The findings open up a new avenue for potential treatments that could bring significant benefits to millions of individuals worldwide. Researchers worked with a mouse model of ulcerative colitis that imitates the severe inflammation and damage found in human patients. Drs. Wang and Au, along with their colleagues, injected the mice with a mix of colon cells and the extracellular matrix surrounding them. This mimicked the tissue commonly affected in ulcerative colitis. They also used polymer nanofibers modified to carry various proteins and molecules used by cancer cells to suppress immune activity. These injections not only reduced symptoms like diarrhea, rectal bleeding, weight loss, and colon shortening but also decreased immune cell infiltration into the colon's lining and reduced inflammatory molecules. Within seven days, the mice that received the combination showed completely healed colon linings. Mice treated with only parts of the combination or no injection still had actively inflamed colon lesions. The treatment also cut the number of colon tumors by 60%, crucial since both mouse models and human patients with ulcerative colitis have a higher risk of colon cancer. Importantly, the injections specifically targeted immune activity against the colon without broadly suppressing immunity in the body. When injected into mouse models with both ulcerative colitis and melanoma or colon tumors, these mice responded to cancer immunotherapy, indicating that the treatment did not cause systemic immunosuppression. Dr. Wang suggests that these findings hint at a potential new way to treat ulcerative colitis. This approach might also be applicable to other autoimmune diseases. The researchers have filed a patent to develop this strategy into a clinical treatment.