Bioengineered Thymic Aggregates For Implantation
SUMMARY
Researchers led by Gay Crooks from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA have bioengineered a thymus implant to treat immune diseases.
BACKGROUND
The thymus plays an important role in the immune cells by producing specialized white blood cells called T cells. Thymus implantation can potentially treat a wide range of immune deficiency diseases that include DiGeorge Anomaly, HIV/AIDS, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. Current state of the art for thymic implants includes transplantation from aborted fetuses or from infants that undergo cardiac surgery. These transplantations have very little success in producing an adequate amount of T cells along with having ethical ramifications. Most importantly, these transplantations face rejection from the patient’s body or can potentially cause an autoimmune disease because the new T cells see the host as an outsider.
INNOVATION
Researchers led by Gay Crooks from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA have bioengineered a thymus implant to treat immune diseases. Their method purifies the patient’s own stem cells, genetically modifies them, and then seeds them into a scaffold to be implanted. The use of patient’s own stem cells prevents rejection and development of autoimmune diseases. In this process they can genetically engineer these stem cells to make augmented T cells that tailor to the patient’s needs (e.g. modifying T cells to attack tumors). These stem cells are then placed in a scaffold that can be specialized on a patient by patient basis that promotes better integration with the patient’s body. These scaffolds can be made of different materials or drug releasing components that perfectly fit the patient’s needs.
APPLICATIONS
ADVANTAGES