Scientific Abstract

Proposal No.  IBD-0159
Principal Investigator:  Willem van Eden, M.D., Ph.D.
Applicant Organization:  Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
Project Title:  Heat shock proteins as therapeutic agents for inflammatory bowel disease
Period of Award:  September 1, 2005 – August 31, 2007

Immune responses to heat shock proteins (HSP) develop in almost all inflammatory diseases.   In experimental disease models, HSPs can prevent or arrest inflammatory damage, and in initial clinical trials in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases, HSP peptides have been shown to promote the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines, indicating immunoregulatory potential of HSPs.  For this reason, HSP seem to qualify as antigens with the capacity to trigger clinically relevant forms of immune regulation.

The immunoregulatory capacity of HSP has been analyzed in arthritis and in diabetes type 1, mainly.  We now propose to perform a one year pilot study to investigate whether HSP can suppress the induction of experimental IBD and to search for the most effective route of administration.

This study could be an essential step for the further development of HSP based immune-interventions in inflammatory bowel diseases in humans.

With the recent (re-)discovery of regulatory T cells as key elements in the control of immunological tolerance, the search for antigens with the capacity to induce regulation has been a research priority.  With their already established impact on the regulation of chronic inflammation in various experimental disease models, HSP are now very innovative and attractive target antigens for the development of therapeutic antigen specific immune interventions.