Maryland Wins Grant for Heart Research - Myocarditis research - Brief Article

Applied Genetics News, Jan, 2000

CEL-SCI Corp. (8229 Boone Blvd., Suite 802, Vienna, VA 22182; Tel: 703/506-9460, Fax: 703/506-9471) and Noel Rose, professor of pathology and medicine at the Department of Pathology, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, (Baltimore, MD). have been selected to receive a Maryland Industrial Partnership (MIPS) award for the potential development of a novel treatment for a certain type of heart disease called autoimmune myocarditis.

Myocarditis is thought to be caused by an attack on the patient's heart muscle by his/her own immune cells and antibodies. Myocarditis is a precursor to dilated cardiomyopathy, which is an end-stage cardiac disease usually requiring a heart transplant. The incidence of dilated cardiomyopathy is about 200,000 people in the U.S. There is no cure.

Rose's team will use CEL-SCI's immune system technology, L.E.A.P.S. (Ligand Epitope Antigen Presentation System), as well as a technology very recently developed at CEL-SCI called AdapT (Antigen Directed Apoptosis). L.E.A.P.S. will be used to establish an animal model of autoimmune myocarditis. AdapT is designed to lead to the removal, in an antigen-specific (highly targeted) manner, of only those immune system cells that cause the disease, thereby leaving the remainder of the immune response intact and subsequently able to defend against other diseases.

If the L.E.A.P.S. or AdapT technologies are shown to work in the animal model for myocarditis, additional studies may be started to test this new approach for the treatment of other autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or Graves disease.