Adoptive Transfer of Regulatory T Cells as a Promising Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis

摘要

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating, chronic inflammatory disorder of the central nervoussystem (CNS) that is characterized by heterogeneous patterns of neurological symptoms(Compston and Coles, 2002), and is the leading cause of disability in young and middle-agedpeople in the developed world (Koch-Henriksen and Sorensen, 2010). MS patients exhibitimpaired immunoregulatory mechanisms that lead to pathological immune responses andneuroinflammation, however it is unclear whether this dysregulation is the cause or a consequenceof the disease. As such, MS treatment most often involves disease-modifying immunomodulatorytherapies (IMTs), as well as symptomatic management. IMTs have arguably been the mostsignificant advances in the treatment of MS. There are currently numerous approved IMTs that areeffective in reducing the frequency of relapses and slowing the progression of relapsing-remittingMS (Garg and Smith, 2015; Faissner and Gold, 2018) through the suppression of aberrant immuneresponses facilitated by autoreactive lymphocytes. However, despite the growing therapeuticarmamentarium for MS over the past two decades, currently approved therapies are ineffectivein a subset of patients with aggressive MS and in progressive forms of the disease.