Cell Therapies In The Treatment Of Autoimmune Diseases

By Maryland Franklin, Ph.D., Vice President and Enterprise Head of Cell & Gene Therapy, Labcorp; Akanksha Gupta, Ph.D., Executive Director, Enterprise Cell & Gene Therapy, Labcorp; Pegah Mehrpouya-Bahrami, Ph.D., Associate Director, Immunology and CGT Therapeutic Area Lead; and Sanda Ljubicic, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Cardiometabolic Biomarkers TA Lead, Biomarker Solution Center, Labcorp Medical & Scientific Affairs, Geneva, Switzerland

Autoimmune disorders pose a significant global health burden, affecting an estimated 14.7 to 23.5 million people in the United States alone — up to 8% of the population. Standard treatment often relies on long-term immunosuppression, which manages symptoms but does not address the root cause or provide a cure. Achieving durable remission in autoimmune disease, therefore, remains a major challenge.

These conditions develop when B- and T-cells malfunction, mistakenly targeting the body’s own tissues as foreign. The resulting immune attack can lead to chronic, and sometimes irreversible, tissue damage, making lifelong treatment necessary for many patients. Emerging cell and gene therapies hold promise to change this paradigm by suppressing or correcting dysfunctional immune responses, or by repairing damaged tissue, often without the need for indefinite treatment regimens.

Chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy — originally designed for blood cancers — has reshaped immunotherapy by reprogramming T-cells to specifically recognize and destroy cells expressing targeted antigens. These engineered T-cells are modified to express single-chain variable fragments that bind to cell surface markers, coupled with signaling domains that enhance persistence and therapeutic efficacy.