Autoimmune Disease

For most of us, when our body is under attack by viruses and bacteria, white blood cells in our immune system, known as B cells, mount a response by producing antibodies to help fight off the foreign invaders. By binding to these invaders, antibodies inactivate them and mark them for destruction.

To keep antibodies from marking our own healthy tissues for destruction, nature has devised ways to enable our immune system to discriminate between self and non-self. In a dysfunctional immune system, however, that ability is compromised and various "self-molecules" are targeted as foreign invaders. The resulting conditions, known as autoimmune diseases, often allow B cells to produce antibodies that attack healthy cells and tissues, including vital organs.

Antibody-mediated autoimmune diseases are potentially life-threatening conditions that affect millions of individuals worldwide. These conditions include lupus, antibody-mediated thrombosis (a blood-clotting disorder that may lead to stroke, myocardial infarction, deep-vein thrombosis and recurrent fetal loss), myasthenia gravis (a neurological disorder resulting in muscle weakness or paralysis), and other serious diseases.

Unfortunately, today there is a lack of effective treatments for these conditions. Current approaches address only disease symptoms and many have serious side effects. In lupus, non-specific treatments that suppress the overall immune system can also impair or kill healthy B cells and leave the patient vulnerable to serious, opportunistic infections.

Treatment of lupus patients with high doses of corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents can result in severe adverse side effects such as diabetes, hypertension, psychosis, cataracts, deterioration and loss of hip and knee joints, and sterility.

In response to the unmet need for effective and safe therapeutic approaches to antibody-mediated diseases, La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company is applying its proprietary Tolerance Technology® to the development of a novel class of compounds, called Toleragens®, with the goal of inactivating targeted B cells, and stopping them from producing harmful antibodies. By specifically targeting the B cells that produce antibodies against "self", our Tolerance Technology represents an approach to autoimmune disease that may offer therapeutic benefits with few side effects.