Recent advances in cellular immunotherapy for immune‐mediated rheumatic diseases

Abstract

Cellular immunotherapy is an emerging therapeutic approach that aims to utilize a patient's immune cells or engineered immune cells to treat Immune‐mediated rheumatic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and ankylosing spondylitis (AS), among others. The PubMed database was searched for 46 relevant pieces of literature. Among them, 18 articles on T‐cell therapy were used to treat RA, AS, SLE, Anti‐Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibodies (ANCA)‐associated vasculitis (AAV), and systemic sclerosis (SSc). There were nine B cell depletion therapies for RA, AS, SLE, and SSc, and 15 articles on mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy for RA, AS, SLE, AAV, SSc, and Sjogren's syndrome (SS). Additionally, there were four articles on Cd19‐targeting Chimeric Antigen Receptor T‐Cell (CART) cell therapy for SLE and SSc treatment. The most common treatments for rheumatological diseases, such as RA, SLE, and SS, include B cell depletion, MSC extracellular vesicle therapy, and CART cell targeted therapy, while the re‐used therapies for rare diseases such as SSc, IgG4‐RD, and AAV include extracellular stem cell vesicles and cytokines, as per the review of the aforementioned literature. CART cell targeting therapy alone is not highly effective, and the common adverse effects include hypotension and dry cough. In summary, cellular immunotherapy has emerged as a better choice for refractory rheumatic immune diseases. In the future, further clinical studies are imperative to precisely target the treatment of rheumatic disease and provide positive outcomes to a broader patient population.