Arthritis, diabetes and multiple sclerosis may soon be prevented with the use of a novel vaccine.
Human trials are to begin next year on the vaccine, which uses part of a common bacteria to halt the effects of these debilitating diseases. It acts by helping to re-educate the body's immune system.
Details of the research breakthrough were delivered yesterday to the annual British Association Festival of Science at the University of Salford.
Auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis occur when tissues are damaged by the body's own immune system, explained Dr Neil Williams of the University of Bristol.
"The immune system can go wrong and attack our own tissues," he said. His approach involves "re-educating the immune system and putting the controls back in place".
He has already succeeded in doing this in animal models by using a single protein from a common and harmless form of the bacterium E.coli.
The results were quite startling, with the majority of test mice that naturally developed arthritis avoiding the disease altogether. The risk of developing arthritis fell from 80 per cent of test mice to just 15 per cent after treatment, he said.
The bacterial protein stimulates an immune system regulator which dampens down the body's immune response. "It seems that its function is to suppress chronic inflammatory disease," said Dr Williams. The regulator was able to shut down the arthritic inflammation being produced by the immune system.
Meanwhile, the possibility of a vaccine against prostate cancer and, in time, other cancers was outlined by Dr Mike Whelan, head of research at Onyvax Ltd, which already has a vaccine in phase II trials - tests to assess its effectiveness.
The immune system normally protects against mutant cells, but cancers can develop if the immune system does not respond. Dr Whelan described how a new vaccine was helping the immune system to recognise and destroy these cells in advanced prostate cancer.
"We take tumour cells from non-matched individuals," he said. Once injected into the patient, they are immediately recognised as "non-self" by the immune system and antibodies are produced against them. There is enough similarity between the introduced cells and the patient's own tumour cells to cause the antibodies to also attack the pre-existing tumour.
Dr Campbell Bunce, head of cellular immunology at Xenova Research, described the progress on two new vaccines against cocaine and nicotine addiction. The approach could provide a new way to help "wean" addicts off these drugs, he said.
The molecules of these drugs were too small for the immune system to recognise and attack, Dr Bunce said.
Addicts can use these drugs too because of the sensations they cause, euphoria in the case of cocaine, when they bind to brain cells. The drugs cannot reach the brain, however, when the antibodies attack, preventing the drugs from having an effect.
The vaccines could be particularly useful for people who have already kicked their habit. They may also play a role in blocking future addiction.
Once vaccinated, a person should get no response from the drugs and so addiction would be far less likely.