Project description:
When two rare autoimmune diseases develop simultaneously — immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), in which the immune system attacks the body's own platelets, and antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), which causes life-threatening blood clots — a dangerous dilemma arises: the body risks bleeding and clotting at the same time.
A team at LMU University Hospital Munich has now shown that the bispecific antibody blinatumomab can treat these conditions at their root cause. It activates the body's own T cells, which selectively eliminate the diseased immune cells that produce the harmful antibodies.
In a young patient who had not responded to any therapy for nine years, the autoantibodies disappeared completely after treatment — and for the first time in years, her long-term medication could be discontinued. The results have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Publication:
Gottschlich A, Bücklein V, El-Marouk V, Kaiser V, Schmid M, Janert TA, Winkelmann M, Ziemann F, Hänel G, Handtke S, Thiele T, Wichmann C, Kobold K, Zugmaier G, Rausch C, Schulze-Koops H, Lindner LH, Spiekermann K**, von Bergwelt-Baildon** M & Subklewe M**
Blinatumomab in combined Immune Thrombocytopenia and Antiphospholipid Syndrome
N Engl J Med. Mar 5 2026.
Paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2516228
Submitting the Paper of the Month:
Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung is using the series “Paper of the Month” to report in an exemplary and hot-off-the-press style on the outstanding work being done by the scientists it supports. We regularly present publications which have recently appeared in especially renowned journals, have emerged from foundation funding and been given appropriate acknowledgment. This is done in the respective categories “Original Paper” and “Review”. In the case of each of these publications, the first author and/or senior author are being funded by the foundation.
We invite all project managers, fellowship recipients and members of graduate study programs to send their work in accordance with the stated criteria as proposal for Paper of the Month to Ms. Anne Asschenfeldt (a.asschenfeldt@ekfs.de).
More Paper of the Month can be found here.
