Using Electricity To “Reprogram” the Immune System for Faster Healing

For centuries, medicine has relied on chemistry—pills, potions, injections, and therapies designed to alter biology through molecules. But a new frontier is emerging, one that swaps chemistry for circuitry. What if the body’s own immune system could be reprogrammed not by drugs, but by electricity?

That future may have just taken its first real step forward.

A team of scientists at Trinity College Dublin has discovered that a simple electric current can rewire one of the most important components of our immune system—the macrophage. By applying controlled electrical stimulation, these immune cells can be “persuaded” to suppress harmful inflammation and accelerate tissue repair. The work, published in Cell Reports Physical Science, signals the dawn of what could become an entirely new class of medicine: bioelectric healing.

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The Beginning of the End for Type 1 Diabetes? Gene-Edited Cells Outsmart the Immune System

For more than a century, type 1 diabetes has been managed, not cured. Patients inject insulin, monitor blood sugar obsessively, and live with the constant shadow of long-term complications. But now, for the first time in history, scientists may have found a way to outsmart the immune system itself—replacing what’s broken with engineered cells that refuse to be rejected. This isn’t just medicine; it’s a glimpse into the future of cellular engineering as a tool to rewrite the rules of human health.

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Nanobiologic approach trains the innate immune system to eliminate tumor cells

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A groundbreaking new type of cancer immunotherapy developed at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai trains the innate immune system to help it eliminate tumor cells through the use of nanobiologics, tiny materials bioengineered from natural molecules that are paired with a therapeutic component, according to a study published in Cell in October.

This nanobiologic immunotherapy targets the bone marrow, where part of the immune system is formed, and activates a process called trained immunity. This process reprograms bone marrow progenitor cells to produce “trained” innate immune cells that halt the growth of cancer, which is normally able to protect itself from the immune system with the help of other types of cells, called immunosuppressive cells.

This work for the first time demonstrates that trained immunity can be successfully and safely induced for the treatment of cancer. The research was performed in animal models, including a mouse model with melanoma, and the researchers said it is being developed for clinical testing.

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How scientists built a ‘living drug’ to beat cancer

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IN 2010, EMILY Whitehead was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a cancer of certain cells in the immune system.

THIS IS THE most common form of childhood cancer, her parents were told, and Emily had a good chance to beat it with chemotherapy. Remission rates for the most common variety were around 85 percent.

It would be 20 months before they’d understand the shadow behind that sunny statistic, and the chilling prospect of volunteering their daughter as patient zero for the world’s first living drug.

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An ‘EpiPen’ for spinal cord injuries

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ANN ARBOR—An injection of nanoparticles can prevent the body’s immune system from overreacting to trauma, potentially preventing some spinal cord injuries from resulting in paralysis.

The approach was demonstrated in mice at the University of Michigan, with the nanoparticles enhancing healing by reprogramming the aggressive immune cells—call it an “EpiPen” for trauma to the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord.

“In this work, we demonstrate that instead of overcoming an immune response, we can co-opt the immune response to work for us to promote the therapeutic response,” said Lonnie Shea, the Steven A. Goldstein Collegiate Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

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The end of chemotherapy? Scientists discover all cancerous cells have a KILL CODE that can be triggered without the gruelling treatment

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Researchers at Northwestern University found that our cells can kill themselves

Currently, this is triggered by disease itself or the artificial use of chemotherapy

Now, experts believe the ‘kill codes’ could be synthetically duplicated for use

Every cell in the human body contains a ‘kill code’ which can be triggered to cause its own self-destruction.

That’s the discovery made by researchers at Northwestern University, Illinois, who believe it could be utilised for the future fight against cancer.

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Reprogrammed cells could fight ‘untreatable’ diseases in the future

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Loring (front row, center) with the Loring Lab Group at the Center for Regenerative Medicine.

Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Scripps Research Institute, and her colleagues transplanted a set of cells into the spinal cords of mice that had lost use of their hind limbs to multiple sclerosis. Within a week, as the experimentalists had expected, the mice rejected the cells. But after another week, the mice began to walk.

 

 

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