55,000 people live with lupus in France. This autoimmune disease cannot currently be cured, but a new innovative therapy is arriving in Clermont-Ferrand and heralds “a very big change” for patients, according to doctors.
What if lupus was no longer limited to being “controlled”, but could, in certain cases, disappear permanently? In Clermont-Ferrand, a new therapeutic approach is about to be tested in patients suffering from severe forms of this autoimmune disease. Still experimental in France, it raises a lot of hope among doctors, even if caution remains required at this stage and its indications remain targeted for the moment. This approach is currently deployed at CHU Gabriel-Montpied, as recently reported by France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
Lupus is a complex disease in which the immune system malfunctions and attacks the body. The symptoms vary from one person to another: joint pain, skin damage, significant fatigue, etc. In the most serious forms, certain organs such as the kidneys or the brain can be affected. Today, treatments aim to stabilize the disease and limit flare-ups, but they do not provide a cure. “We seek to calm the illness, to “turn it off”, then to avoid relapses” explains Doctor Ludovic Trefond from CHU Gabriel-Montpied to our colleagues. Many patients live with long-term treatment, sometimes restrictive, requiring regular monitoring in a specialized center. And for some, that’s not enough.
It is precisely for these difficult situations that a new avenue is being explored in this center. It is based on a technique already used in oncology: CAR-T cells. “It’s a treatment that we copied from hematology, continues the doctor. We take the patient’s white blood cells, send them to the laboratory to reprogram them so that they target the cells responsible for lupus.” Once reinjected, these modified immune cells will act directly on the cells responsible for lupus. Doctors speak of a form of “reset” of the immune system.
If this approach begins in France, it has already been tested abroad, notably in Germany, with results which “give a lot of hope”. “Patients who took several treatments were able to stop them completely. The markers of the disease in the blood disappeared” shares Dr. Trefond. Unprecedented situations in lupus. In Clermont-Ferrand, the first patients concerned will be those for whom current treatments no longer work sufficiently. In this specialized center, several hundred people are treated for lupus, sometimes with complex forms.
Beyond innovation, it is above all the daily lives of patients that are at stake. Living with lupus often involves persistent fatigue, pain, and sometimes heavy treatments. If this new therapy confirms its effectiveness, it could alleviate these constraints, or even, in certain cases, allow lasting remission. A prospect that, for many, still seemed inaccessible a few years ago
