Latest News

The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) implemented a Strategic Partnerships and Business Development Initiative and will be establishing and building relationships with industry and advocacy groups. This will promote a platform to expand the collaborative community of the ITN. For more information follow @ITNpartnerships on Twitter.

Update October 2, 2013: ITN's sample sharing program, previously managed through BioShare, has been integrated into ITN's clinical trials portal, TrialShare. Please visit ITNTrialShare.org to learn more about or gain access to ITN clinical trial samples.

This year marks the Immune Tolerance Network's 10th anniversary! To celebrate, the ITN invites you to attend a one day symposium - "Ten Years of Tolerance" on November 1, 2010 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.

Results of an Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) clinical trial may provide doctors with another weapon in the treatment of ANCA-associated vasculitis, which has seen no new approved treatments in 40 years. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the drug rituximab provides the same treatment benefits as the existing standard of care, and appears to offer additional benefits to those suffering relapses.

The results of two Immune Tolerance Network (ITN)-sponsored efforts in identifying genetic and cellular signatures of transplant tolerance were published this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The signatures are patterns of gene expression and cell types that were found to be characteristic of a set of rare patients who developed a natural tolerance for their kidney transplant – meaning they do not require anti-rejection medications. It is hoped that these signatures will one day yield a test that will allow doctors reduce the dose of or even eliminate anti-rejection medications in an individually tailored fashion.

The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) is currently seeking Concept Proposals for novel clinical trials designed to induce immune tolerance in Type 1 Diabetes, transplantation, autoimmune diseases and allergy and asthma. In addition, the ITN accepts applications for the development of novel tolerance assays or mechanistic studies for the purposes of establishing new surrogate biomarkers of immune tolerance and investigating the mechanisms of clinical tolerance.  Proposals should be submitted via our site:  https://www.immunetolerance.org/for-researchers/proposals

The recommendations of the ITN/JDRF Type 1 Diabetes Combination Therapy Assessment Group have been published in the May 2010 issue of Clinical & Experimental Immunology.

SEATTLE – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has named Gerald T. Nepom, MD, PhD, as the director of the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), one of the largest government-funded clinical research networks in the country working to establish new treatments for diseases of the immune system. Dr. Nepom is presently the director of Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and will maintain both positions providing scientific oversight and management. The appointment includes a $1 million management contract for BRI in 2010. This confirms BRI’s international leadership role in immunology research.

Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) director and founder, Jeffrey A. Bluestone has accepted the position of Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, San Francisco, pending approval by the UC Regents.

The Immune Tolerance Network's (ITN's) START research trial for new-onset type 1 diabetes has received the approval of its Data Safety and Monitoring Board to accept patients aged 12-18 years into the study. The decision was made after a review of safety data from the initial group of 10 adult subjects enrolled into the study. The trial is now open to individuals between the ages of 12-35 who have been diagnosed with new-onset type 1 diabetes within the past 3 months. The START trial is being conducted under the direction of principal investigator Dr. Stephen Gitelman at the University of California, San Francisco and at 9 other research centers in the US