The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) is a collaborative network for clinical research, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. Our mission is to accelerate the clinical development of immune tolerance therapies.
Immune tolerance therapies reprogram the immune system so that disease-causing immune responses are stopped while maintaining the immune system’s ability to combat pathogen infection. The ITN develops and conducts clinical trials, each supported by mechanistic studies, of specialized immune tolerance therapies in the following areas:
Autoimmune Disease Allergies and Asthma Organ Transplantation Type 1 Diabetes
ITN by the numbers
• 75 total clinical trials - 18 Allergy trials; 32 Autoimmunity trials; 25 Transplant trials
• 250+ clinical sites and investigators at leading academic hospitals worldwide
• 3500+ patients enrolled in ITN clinical trials
• 708,805 clinical specimens in the ITN repository
Designing better studies through collaboration
The ITN facilitates collaborative studies between academic, governmental and industry researchers in order to develop and fund cutting edge immune tolerance research that could not otherwise be conducted.
The ITN development model is a highly interactive process that capitalizes on our wide-ranging, multidisciplinary expertise, provided by an advisory board (Network Steering Committee) of highly respected faculty from institutions world-wide. It begins with the application process - from pre- and post-application support, to formal Q&A sessions with reviewers, we help investigators develop high quality research studies.
Connecting clinical results to mechanisms of action
The ITN looks beyond the traditional clinical trial endpoints of safety and efficacy, actively investigating the mechanisms of tolerance induction and maintenance, developing clinical trials based upon mechanism-based hypotheses. In addition to clinical efficacy, ITN clinical trials validate tolerance mechanisms while also defining new biomarkers of tolerance in human disease. By taking this approach to our clinical trials and mechanistic research, we make sure that we learn something from every clinical trial to advance knowledge and get closer to cures –- no matter what the clinical outcome of the study.
Supported by an unprecedented array of core facilities, offering state-of-the-art genetic, cellular and immunologic assays, the ITN is generating some of the first combined clinical and mechanistic data on immune tolerance induction in humans.