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Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Getting the latest healthcare news for you
A cancer-fighting immune therapy may be able to reboot the immune system and put severe rheumatoid arthritis into remission. In the world's first clinical trial of its kind, CAR T-cell therapy dramatically reduced disease activity in all six patients with treatment-resistant RA — and three achieved sustained, medication-free remission. Larger studies are still needed, but early results are promising.
A therapy born in cancer wards may be finding a new home in rheumatology. Researchers at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin tested CD19 CAR T-cell therapy — which works by engineering a patient's own immune cells to hunt down disease-driving B cells — in six people with severe, treatment-resistant rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Published in Nature Medicine, the results from the COMPARE trial's first phase are striking: disease activity fell in all six participants, and three achieved sustained remission without any RA medication for up to a year.
The therapy appears to do more than just calm inflammation — it may actually reset the immune system. After treatment, harmful autoantibodies dropped sharply, and when B cells returned, they were mostly "naïve" cells not primed to attack the body's own tissues. Crucially, protective antibodies from prior vaccinations (like chickenpox and tetanus) remained intact.
By the Numbers
Why it matters: For patients with severe RA who've exhausted their options, this could eventually represent a one-time treatment that resets — rather than just suppresses — a misfiring immune system. While still experimental and limited by small sample size, these early results offer real hope for a population with few remaining choices.
