The initiative, selected for the 2026 CaixaImpulse Health Innovation call, proposes a strategy to restore the immune system's tolerance to myelin, the protective layer of nerve fibers, in patients with multiple sclerosis.
Unlike other treatments that broadly modulate the immune system, this project aims to re-educate the immune response. The team uses tolerogenic dendritic cells from the patient themselves to generate regulatory T cells (Tregs) specific to myelin antigens, capable of modulating the immune response without genetic modification and adhering to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards.
"With this project, we aim to advance towards a more specific and personalized therapy, based on re-educating the patient's own immune cells," explains Federico Fondelli, a researcher in the IGTP's Immunopathology research group.
The project also includes tools to select patients most likely to respond to the treatment, by identifying specific myelin peptides, and a genetic test to predict the satisfactory outcome of the cell batch.
This approach could pave the way for more targeted treatments for multiple sclerosis and be adapted to other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis.
The CaixaImpulse call, driven by the "la Caixa" Foundation, supports 30 projects out of 449 proposals submitted in this edition.
