Regulatory T-cell adoptive immunotherapy: potential for treatment of autoimmunity

Tregs have shown considerable potential in treating preclinical models of autoimmunity. These studies have highlighted the importance of Treg antigen (Ag) specificity. Translation of these promising results to the clinic will require a robust method of generating large pure populations of Ag-specific Tregs. These include the recently described T-cell receptor gene transfer approach, which has proven to be a rapid and reliable method to generate large populations of Ag-specific Tregs. In this article, we will examine these various approaches and discuss their relative merits. Furthermore, we will discuss the obstacles that need to be surmounted to allow adoptive Treg therapy to progress to the clinic for the benefit of autoimmune patients.