THE POSSIBLE CURE OF ULCERATIVE COLITIS BASED ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT SOME CANCERS ARE RICH SOURCE OF NON- APOPTOTIC AND FUNCTIONAL TREG CELLS

Abstract

Many of the Autoimmune diseases, if not all, arise because either the levels of regulatory T cells (Tregs) have reduced in the milieu of organ affected or the Tregs in the milieu of organ affected have impaired.When the Tregs undergo either of these two fates, the conventional T cells wreck havoc on the healthy cells of the body, killing them and causing chronic inflammation. Such a state in the colon and rectum together is mostly the disease called Ulcerative Colitis (UC). It has been hypothesized that the impaired functioning of Tregs cause UC. Hence if the milieu of colon and rectum in the UC patients is populated with non-apoptotic fully functional Tregs, they can perhaps be cured. But from where to get such Tregs ? From the studies of Immunotherapies in Cancers I hypothesize that some cancers including the colitis-associated cancer can be the source of such Tregs. Based on these ideas I propose in this paper two possible curative therapies for UC which I call the CAR-Treg therapy and the E-Treg therapy. CAR-Treg therapy is based on the theory of multispecific Chimeric Antigen Receptors, and E-Treg therapy is based on the theory of cell encapsulation.