In a landmark research paper culminating 20 years of scientific investigation, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have shown, for the first time, how bacterial superantigen toxins work and how antagonists they designed can block toxin action and save lives. The paper was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
While the inflammatory immune response is essential to protecting humans against viruses and bacteria, superantigen toxins cause an exaggerated response - called an “immune storm” - that can do a great deal of damage in the body and can result in multiple organ failure. The researchers describe a novel host-oriented therapeutic approach for preventing lethal immune responses. With major implications for medicine, the novel approach is both broad-acting and impervious to bacterial antibiotic resistance.