The Body's Friendly Fire

A team of Dartmouth researchers has discovered a way to block the mechanism that in some diseases causes the body's immune system to attack itself. Such self-destructive activity is common in diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

The group, headed by immunobiologist Randolph J. Noelle, has been working in conjunction with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Seattle. The researchers say that previous studies have shown that a molecule, gp39, regulates the body's immune response. People who have autoimmune disease have a dysfunction in that system; they make antibodies to their own tissues. Noelle and his team reasoned that if they could inactivate the gp39 molecule, they could block the body's ability to create this immune response to itself. After a year-long study using mice with rheumatoid arthritis, the scientists found a way to suppress the immune response. "We don't want to suggest this is a cure," warned Noelle; nor does he suggest that therapeutic measures are in the immediate future. The value of this discovery is that scientists know they can regulate the immune system.