Immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy are used primarily to treat cancer. In the future, these patient-specific therapies, manufactured from patients’ own immune cells, could also help cure autoimmune diseases.
When the immune system encounters a virus, it produces antibodies designed to recognize and eliminate the invader. But in some people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the immune response goes awry, producing autoantibodies—antibodies that mistakenly attack the body’s own tissues.
Results from an early-stage clinical trial, published in Nature Communications, showed encouraging outcomes among patients with newly diagnosed cancer whose tumors had spread to distant organs.
Lisraya carries a boxed warning typical of JAK inhibitors, but otherwise has a broad label that allows use in all adults with the rare autoimmune disease, setting up the drug for blockbuster status in a few years, according to Leerink.
With the approval, Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro becomes the first dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist indicated to lower the risk of heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death in adults with type 2 diabetes.