[Autoimmunity]

The understanding of the molecular and cellular events leading to autoimmune reactions, and potentially also to autoimmune disorders, is essential for the design of novel, specific approaches in the treatment of patients with autoimmune diseases. A variety of regulatory immune mechanisms are operative in the periphery which control the potentially detrimental action of autoreactive T- and B-cells that have escaped the central selection process in the thymus and the bone marrow respectively. Hence, novel strategies to treat autoimmune disorders exploit and attempt to support these regulatory pathways, which may be deficient in patients with autoimmune diseases. However, despite a large number of studies reporting successful treatment of autoimmune diseases in animal models using these novel strategies, major obstacles have still to be overcome before these novel strategies can be successfully used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases in patients.