A therapy that blocks an immune-regulating protein could pave the way for a new class of drugs to save lives from sepsis or septic shock, according to a recent study.

In a report published in the August issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, the therapy was able to almost double the survival rate of mice with sepsis, while reducing cell death.

The therapy, which blocks Programmed Death 1, or PD-1, a cell membrane protein, is already being studied in clinical trials to help fight cancer and hepatitis C.

"It could really be something useful clinically," said Dr. Steven Opal, professor of medicine at Brown University and the Infectious Disease Society of America’s representative for the Surviving Sepsis campaign. "What’s nice about it is, it’s a new way to approach the problem, and the situation with septic shock is one where we really need new ideas."

Sepsis, known colloquially as "blood poisoning," is a massive inflammatory response to severe bacterial infection, and a leading cause of mortality in patients after surgery. It can also lead to septic shock--dangerously low blood pressure that can result in multiple organ failure and death.

Someone dies from sepsis once every two and a half minutes, according to the Sepsis Alliance, a charity, and more than 210,000 people die from it in the United States every year, making it the third leading cause of death nationwide, according to some accounts. Treatment costs are upward of $17 billion.

Currently, the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved therapy is activated protein C, which only has a "modest effect on survival," according to immunologists Sanna M. Goyert and Jack Silver, in their accompanying editorial.

Patients with sepsis first undergo a "cytokine storm," or hyperinflammation. Under current standards of care, most patients survive the first stage, the researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Miss., led by Dr. Richard S. Hotchkiss, wrote in their article. But the patients sometimes then die during the following period of severe immunosuppression called "immune paralysis," in which the original infection and secondary infections overwhelm the patient.

And that's where blocking PD-1 might help.

According to the researchers, PD-1 is known to suppress some immune responses, and help regulate T cells. This can be beneficial: for instance, knockout mice lacking PD-1 can develop lupus-like autoimmune diseases, likely because of uncontrolled immune activity, the authors said. But in experiments, these PD-1-free mice also show resistance to sepsis.

More Industry Headlines