A doctor at Shanghai’s Changzheng Hospital, who is behind a world-first treatment for autoimmune disease, has been announced as part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024.

Dr Xu Huji led his team to adopt a novel CAR-T cell immunotherapy by using genetically engineered, healthy-donor-derived cells to treat patients with serious autoimmune diseases.

Different from the common processing of most CAR-T therapy, or chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, which is specifically developed for each individual by reprogramming the patient’s own immune cells to target their diseases, mainly cancer, Xu’s team used T cells from healthy donors and through batch processing.

So the cost is much lower and the processing is also smooth as donors have healthy immune cells.

The clinical trial conducted by Xu’s team on the first batch of three patients, one with refractory immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy and two with systemic sclerosis, all reported very positive results after being infused with the cells.

The research was published by world-leading journal Cell in July, drawing international attention.

Over 8 percent of the world’s population suffers autoimmune diseases, which result in high disability, influence life quality, and impose severe financial burdens. It is the third-highest killer globally, following cerebro-cardiovascular disease and cancer. Among the patients, 30 percent suffer from refractory conditions, facing poor treatment effects, and a high risk of relapse.

Since the success of the first batch of patients, Xu’s team has provided similar treatments to another two dozen individuals with autoimmune diseases. He hopes that such treatments will become available to people even with mild forms of those diseases.

“We have a plan,” Xu says. “We really want this to be widely used,” Nature added.

Xu and Li Chunlai, who is behind China’s Chang’e-6 space mission, are the only two Chinese honored on the list.