Combination immunotherapy to enhance tissue regeneration in the elderly
JHU Ref #: [C17006]
Value Proposition
· Regenerative medicine strategies aim to restore or replace damaged tissues and organs, with patients suffering from chronic diseases, injuries, and degenerative conditions as the end-users of regenerative medicine therapies.
· Current methods to increase efficacy in regenerative medicine include using cell-based therapies to promote tissue regeneration or development of more biocompatible materials and scaffolding.
· The disclosed technology pertains to enhancing regenerative medicine through immunotherapy by inhibiting a specific aged-related immune response that causes excessive fibrosis and hampers tissue repair, thereby improving therapeutic outcomes.
Unmet Need
· Regenerative medicine and tissue engineering approaches to enhance tissue repair and function have encountered challenges translating these strategies clinically, with a high failure rate and excess inflammation and fibrosis which contribute to the failure of many surgical implants.
· The role of the immune system in tissue repair has only recently been recognized, and the immunological changes that occur with aging may be responsible for why older patients show declining tissue repair and regeneration after tissue damage.
· There is an unmet need to further interrogate the effects of age-related immune changes during regenerative medicine approaches to increase tissue repair and better clinical outcomes.
Technology Description
· Researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that aging alters the immune and stromal responses to biomaterials used in regenerative medicine and reduces tissue repair function.
· Combining regenerative treatment (ECM biomaterials) with immunotherapy (IL-17 neutralizing antibodies) was shown to inhibit a subset of age-related immune changes and restore muscle repair function in pre-clinical trials.
· Targeting this immune-stromal axis can increase the therapeutic response to regenerative medicine in aged patients.
Stage of Development
· The disclosed technology is currently in the pre-clinical stages, with the inventors having identified a new therapeutic target and testing this inhibition in pre-clinical studies but not yet specifying a particular agent.
Publication
Age-related Immune-Stromal Networks Inhibit Response to Regenerative Immunotherapies
Jin Han, Christopher Cherry, Joscelyn C. Mejias, Anna Ruta, David R. Maestas Jr., Alexis N. Peña, Helen Hieu Nguyen, Brenda Yang, Elise Gray-Gaillard, Natalie Rutkowski, Ada J. Tam, Elana J. Fertig, Franck Housseau, Sudipto Ganguly, Erika M. Moore, Drew M. Pardoll, Jennifer H. Elisseeff
bioRxiv 2021.08.17.456641; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.17.456641
