Reprogramming Immune Tolerance Through Targeted Thymic Delivery

The Volpatti lab at Northwestern University is developing a targeted drug delivery system that harnesses immune cells to deliver therapeutic proteins to the thymus, with the goal of retraining the immune system as a new strategy for treating autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, affect millions of people worldwide and occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissues. Current treatments broadly suppress the immune system after disease has developed, reducing symptoms but increasing the risk of serious infections and other complications. The Volpatti lab is developing a new drug delivery strategy that addresses autoimmune disease at its source by targeting the thymus, the organ where immune cells are trained to distinguish healthy tissue from harmful threats. The approach uses naturally circulating immune cells as carriers to transport therapeutic proteins into the thymus, overcoming a longstanding challenge that has limited progress in this field. The project will first determine whether this delivery strategy can successfully reach the thymus and then test whether delivering self-proteins can retrain the immune system to eliminate harmful autoimmune cells. If successful, this work could establish a new platform for restoring immune tolerance and lay the foundation for future therapies that treat autoimmune disease without broadly suppressing immunity.