Raising a Treg cell army

Despite promising preclinical findings that raising levels of T_reg cells might have utility against autoimmune disease, obtaining enough of the rare cells from humans has been a major translational obstacle. Now, British and American teams have proposed ex vivo strategies to expand and activate T_reg cells harvested from patients and have shown that these cultured cells have efficacy in mouse models of graft-versus-host disease and graft rejection.^1-3

Athelos, a new subsidiary of NeoStem Inc., hopes to start clinical testing of an approach related to the new methods by year end...