Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the University of Michigan have developed a monoclonal antibody to stop sepsis.
The antibody “also has the potential to treat a broad array of other inflammatory conditions, including autoimmune disorders, their research indicates.” The antibody showed “transformative potential for combatting life-threatening inflammatory diseases” in testing on lab mice, and potential applications include “deadly acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which rose to public attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as ischemia-reperfusion injury, which is tissue damage caused when blood flow is cut off and restored.”
Sepsis “strikes up to 50 million people worldwide every year, killing approximately 11 million. It is a leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals, and the risk of death increases every hour it goes untreated. It is caused when the body’s immune response spirals out of control in response to an infection, potentially leading to organ failure and death. Even with aggressive treatment, up to 40% of patients who reach the most severe stage of sepsis still die.”
Early testing suggests this new antibody can shut down the body’s hyperactive immune response before organ damage can occur “without the unwanted side effects of existing sepsis treatments, such as unintended suppression of the immune system.” The scientists also “identified changes that take place in macrophages that spur harmful ‘feedback loops’ that drive the body’s uncontrolled inflammatory response. The researchers’ new antibody, they found, interrupts those changes.”
