T Cell Therapy Now Taking Aim at Autoimmune Disease

CAR T cell therapy, a cancer-fighting immunotherapy pioneered at Penn Medicine, is now being applied to the autoimmune condition lupus. After a German team treated the first lupus patient with CAR T cell therapy in 2020, in what David Porter, MD, director of Cell Therapy and Transplant, characterized as a “bold experiment,” other clinical trials have taken off worldwide, including one here at Penn Medicine, led by Porter, Peter Merkel, MD, chief of Rheumatology, Kimberly DeQuattro, MD, an assistant professor of Rheumatology (on left in above photo), and Gaia Coppock, MD, an assistant professor in Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension (on right). The team has already treated a patient whose symptoms have improved and led to him beginning to be weaned off his medication, but they are being extra careful as they proceed. “These are experiments with great promise, [but] we don’t want to hurt anybody,” Merkel explained.