Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are characterized by chronic inflammation of the intestinal tract associated with an imbalance of the intestinal microbiota. Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the most widely known types of IBD and have been the focus of attention due to their increasing incidence. Recent studies have pointed out genes associated with IBD susceptibility that, together with environment factors, may contribute to the outcome of the disease. In ulcerative colitis, there are several therapies available, depending on the stage of the disease. Aminosalicylates, corticosteroids, and cyclosporine are used to treat mild, moderate, and severe disease, respectively. In Crohn's disease, drug choices are dependent on both location and behavior of the disease. Nowadays, advances in treatments for IBD have included biological therapies, based mainly on monoclonal antibodies or fusion proteins, such as anti-TNF drugs. Notwithstanding the high cost involved, these biological therapies show a high index of remission, enabling a significant reduction in cases of surgery and hospitalization. Furthermore, migration inhibitors and new cytokine blockers are also a promising alternative for treating patients with IBD. In this review, an analysis of literature data on biological treatments for IBD is approached, with the main focus on therapies based on emerging recombinant biomolecules.

The usual treatments for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), such as advanced lung adenocarcinoma, are unspecific and aggressive, and include lung resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Recently, treatment with monoclonal antibodies and biological inhibitors has emerged as an effective alternative, generating effective results with few side effects. In recent years, several clinical trials using monoclonal antibodies presented potential benefits to NSCLC, and 4 of them are already approved for the treatment of NSCLC, such as cetuximab, bevacizumab, nivolumab and pembrolizumab. Also, biological inhibitors are attractive tolls for biological applications. Among the approved inhibitors are crizotinib, erlotinib, afatinib and gefitinib, and side effects are usually mild to intense. Nevertheless, biological molecule treatments are under development, and several new monoclonal antibodies and biological inhibitors are in trial to treat NSCLC. Also under trial study are as follows: anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies (nimotuzumab and ficlatuzumab), anti-IGF 1 receptor (IGF-1R) monoclonal antibody (figitumumab), anti-NR-LU-10 monoclonal antibody (nofetumomab) as well as antibodies directly affecting the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) molecule (ipilimumab and tremelimumab), to receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL) (denosumab) or to polymerase enzyme (veliparib and olaparib). Among new inhibitors under investigation are poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors (veliparib and olaparib) and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor (buparlisib). However, the success of immunotherapies still requires extensive research and additional controlled trials to evaluate the long-term benefits and side effects.

The ingestion of most dietary protein can cause systemic tolerance, and such tolerance is easier to induce in younger than in older mice. In this study, we examined whether oral tolerance to ovalbumin (OVA) could be induced in OVA-T-cell receptor (OVA-TCR)-specific transgenic mice. Continuous feeding or gavage with OVA induced tolerance, measured as reduced antibody production, in young and aged BALB/c mice, in a dose-dependent manner, but this effect was not observed in transgenic mice. Once BALB/c mice became tolerant, this state was maintained for over 44 weeks, although the tolerant state could be reversed by adoptive cell transfer. DO11.10 mice did not become tolerant upon continuous feeding with OVA, and the adoptive transfer of naïve cells increased the levels of specific antibodies in their sera after antigenic challenge. The immunization schedule used here leads to a Th2-dependent antibody response in normal BALB/c mice. However, the same schedule induced both Th1-and Th2-antibody responses in transgenic mice. Dendritic cells (DC) from tolerant BALB/c mice were less efficient in the induction of the proliferation of cocultured T cells from both BALB/c and DO11.10 mice, as well as Th1 [interleukin (IL)-2 and interferon (IFN)-g] and Th2 (IL-4 and IL-10) cytokine production. The DC from DO11.10 transgenic mice were equally efficient in the induction of T-cell proliferation in both normal and transgenic mice, as well as in the induction of Th1 and Th2 cytokines, whether or not the mice consumed OVA. Transforming growth factor (TGF)-b secretion was significantly lower in the supernatants of T cells from both normal and transgenic mice cocultured with DC from DO11.10 mice that had consumed OVA, while it was significantly higher in the presence of DC from normal tolerant mice, thus implicating TGF-b as a regulatory cytokine in oral tolerance in the murine model.

Dietary proteins play an important role in the regulation of systemic immune response, in a phenomenon known as oral tolerance (OT). To evaluate the effects of OT on a murine model of type II collagen (CII) plus ovalbumin (OVA)-induced arthritis (CIA), mice were fed with OVA either before or after CIA induction. OT significantly reduced the paw edema and synovial inflammation, as well as serum levels of anti-CII, the ex vivo proliferation and inflammatory cytokine production by spleen cells from CIA mice. The frequencies of Foxp3(+) and IL-10(+) cells were higher, whereas IFNγ(+) cells and IL-17(+) cells were lower, among gated CD4(+) spleen T cells from tolerized CIA mice than in those from non-tolerized CIA mice. Adoptive transfer of tolerogenic dendritic cells (DCs) before CIA induction mimics the effects observed in the OT. We demonstrate here that bystander suppression induced by OT can modify the course of CIA and tolerogenic DCs play a role this phenomenon.