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The gold standard to diagnose food allergy is an oral food challenge (OFC), but it can cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals. Reliable in vitro tests would eliminate undesirable aspects of OFCs, allowing easier and safer diagnoses and assessments of clinical responses to treatments.

This week on WRVO Public Radio's Take Care, hosts Lorraine Rapp and Linda Lowen talk with Dr. Gerald Nepom, director of the Immune Tolerance Network, about the ITN's LEAP study and the new guidelines for the introduction of peanut products that might prevent high risk children from developing the allergy. To listen to the full interview, click here.

In an important follow-up to LEAP-On, which demonstrated that the early introduction of peanut in high-risk infants led to durable prevention of peanut allergy, the investigators now show that early consumption of peanut in infants at high risk of peanut allergy is allergen-specific and does not prevent the development of other allergic disease to other foods, aeroallergens, or allergic reactions to tree nuts and sesame. Furthermore, peanut consumption does not hasten the resolution of eczema or egg allergy.

ITN’s BRAVOS (Evaluation of Brentuximab Vedotin for Diffuse Cutaneous System Sclerosis) has opened for recruitment. The goal of this clinical trial is to determine the safety of an investigational study drug, brentuximab vedotin (ADCETRIS®), in diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis (dcSSc). Researchers will also assess whether ADCETRIS® has any effect on symptoms associated with dcSSc, and will examine the effect of the ADCETRIS® on the immune system by looking at blood and skin samples.

An article published today in the American Journal of Transplantation examined the prevalence of a previously identified genetic signature associated with tolerance in a cohort of kidney transplant patients who may benefit from immunosuppression minimization. A transplant recipients’ lifetime use of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection exposes them to health complications associated with drug toxicity and long-term immunosuppression. However, the development of grafted tissue tolerance, either spontaneously or intentionally induced, in some kidney transplant recipients suggests that continued immunosuppression is not always necessary to protect the transplanted organ. As significant incidence of damage to the grafted tissue can occur during minimization or withdrawal of immunosuppression, markers of immune tolerance would be useful in informing safe drug withdrawal in tolerant patients, while protecting non-tolerant patients from unneeded risk. In previous studies, ITN reported increased expression of B cell associated genes in tolerant (spontaneous and induced) kidney transplant recipients that was associated with changes in the frequencies of specific B cell populations and stable. In order to test this “B cell signature” in a clinical setting, the ITN and the Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation (CTOT) consortium designed the ARTIST clinical trial a multi-center observational study with 248 enrolled stable renal transplant recipients receiving immunosuppression. Peripheral blood collected at three specific time-points one year apart was analyzed for the prevalence and stability of the B cell signature.

Immunotherapy that exposes hay-fever patients to increasing amounts of grass pollen over time can be an effective way to reduce severe allergic symptoms in the long term. But in a new study published today in the journal JAMA, results from the ITN GRASS trial demonstrate that a two-year course of treatment is not enough to achieve lasting effects, bolstering previous findings that more time is needed taking the medication to get lasting benefit.

In a study appearing online in Neurology, the HALT-MS trial demonstrated that patients with active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) showed sustained remission out to 5 years following high dose immunosuppressive therapy combined with autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (HDIT/HCT).

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Jerry Nepom, Director of the ITN, has received the 2017 George Eisenbarth Award, a prestigious honor in recognition of his career in research for type 1 diabetes (T1D). The award was presented to Dr. Nepom at the international Immunology of Diabetes conference, held in San Francisco in January. The award was established in 2013 upon the death of George Eisenbarth, a pioneer in the field of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Marion Rewers, from the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, presented this award to Dr. Nepom, who was cited for contributions as a leader who made major discoveries in the immunology, biomarkers and therapy of T1D. Dr. Nepom delivered a keynote address to the conference outlining strategies for immunotherapy of T1D, dedicated in honor of Dr. Eisenbarth.

An expert panel sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, issued clinical guidelines to aid health care providers in early introduction of peanut-containing foods to infants to prevent the development of peanut allergy.

Study results suggesting that T cell exhaustion markers may be correlated with treatment response in type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients from the Immune Tolerance Network’s AbATE study were published today in Science Immunology. This research, led by Alice Long, PhD, and Peter Linsley, PhD, at Benaroya Research Institute, used integrated systems biology and flow cytometry approaches to investigate pathways associated with C-peptide stabilization in responders to anti-CD3 treatment. The authors determined that a population of CD8 T cells that resemble exhausted T cells is associated with the best treatment outcome, suggesting T cell exhaustion as a potential target for therapy in T1D.