Antibody-Drugs and Natural Medicines for Autoimmune Diseases

About this Research Topic

Background

Autoimmunity diseases are characterized by abnormality of immune system activation and chronic inflammation. To date, there are few therapeutic drugs for these diseases. In the last 20 years, antibody drugs, including inhibitors of tumor necrosis factor, interleukins, T cells, B cells, or JAK, have been demonstrated to improve the clinical prognosis of autoimmunity diseases, especially for the patients with a complicated disease or inability to tolerate the adverse effect of long-term prednisone and conventional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) administration. Natural medicines have demonstrated a certain efficacy for autoimmunity diseases. Rapid progress in the development of antibody drugs and natural medicines, offers opportunity for some autoimmunity diseases lacking therapy.

However, pre-existing antibody drugs and natural medicines still do not fully meet clinical therapeutic needs, and not all patients have a response to this treatment. Unfortunately, the efficacy of these medicines cannot be predicted for the patients. Therefore, it is important to find new therapeutic targets from other key immunocytes, immune pathways, and cytokines. Another aspect is to develop a prediction system of pre-existing antibody drugs or natural medicines for patients with autoimmunity diseases. In addition, it is rarely reported for off-label use of pre-existing antibody drugs in the autoimmunity diseases lacking therapy, and no robust data are available. Providing relevant and comprehensive data for the assessment of relative efficacy and safety could require indirect comparisons (meta-analysis).

In this Research Topic, we are interested in articles covering specific themes as followed:
• New potential targets of antibody drugs or natural medicines and related immunity mechanisms for autoimmune diseases.
• The dynamic changes of immune status during antibody-drug treatment and related prediction factors of efficacy response.
• The cohort studies or Meta-analysis to assess the efficacy and safety for off-label use of the pre-existing antibody drugs.
• The biomarkers to early diagnose autoimmunity diseases.
• Pharmacological efficacy and molecular mechanism of natural medicines used in the treatment of autoimmune disease.

Important Note: This research topic does not accept publication studies carried out with crude extracts or mixtures. Only the use of highly purified, chemically characterized compounds is acceptable.

Keywords: Autoimmune diseases, antibody-drugs, natural medicines, immunity, therapeutic effect.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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