It sounds like the holy grail of medicine: a one-time therapy athat eliminates faulty immune cells; reboots the body’s defenses; and halts chronic illnesses like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis in their tracks.
That’s exactly what scientists — and companies like TG Therapeutics, led by CEO Michael Weiss ’88, are chasing. The key has always been finding ways to precisely target the harmful B cells that drive these diseases.
Over decades, the science has sharpened. Enter CAR-T therapy: a method of genetically reprogramming immune cells to recognize and eliminate problem cells. TG is building on academic research out of Germany that showed CD19 CAR-T therapy could potentially reset the immune system.
TG’s version, called Azer-cel, uses donor T cells (think Navy SEALs of the immune system), engineered to hunt cells with the CD19 marker found on B cells. Once infused, they seek and destroy.
TG’s goal is a scalable, accessible treatment that could be “one and done.” No more lifelong immunosuppression therapies — just a reset.
“Can you do a deep enough B-cell depletion that you literally wipe out all B cells?” Weiss asks. “And then what returns are normal, not pathogenic, B cells?”
Azer-cel is still in early trials and currently requires hospitalization and chemotherapy, but Weiss envisions a future in which a simple injection might do the job. “We’re not there yet,” he says, “but that is what we’re driving to.”