Our Mission Statement

A healthy pregnancy for all!

About ImmunoVENtion

CEO & Founder

Dr. Andrea Loewendorf, PhD, is the driving force behind ImmunoVENtion.

A biologist by training, passionate women's rights advocate, ImmunoVENtion is where Dr. Loewendorf puts everything on the line. The scientific idea for treating a disease thus far largely ignored by society, industry, and everyone but the sufferers and the helpless onlookers like loved ones and physicians whos' toolbox is embarrassingly empty. The leadership to build the team necessary to fill the many gaps still open to tackle this endeavor. The humility to ask for help during the many times when the CEO does not know best. The tenacity to keep going when yet another "no" comes along.

But she is not alone, no! ImmunoVENtion is teaming up with Maternal Beats, LLC to address the problem of preeclampsia together. Find out more about our clinical trial.

ImmunoVEntion's goal?

As the CEO of ImmunoVEntion, I want to TREAT preeclampsia. Now.

I am putting my intellect, my money, and my time on the line to develop treatments for this disease, now.

I don't want to study it some more. I don't want to understand it better. I want to treat it.

On the upper left of this website, please find the tab "PE Clinical Trial" - a nutritional interventioal trial that I am helping bring alive. This trial is the brainchild of Dr. Nancy Hart, MD, and believe me, my friends, I am the last person who wants to see ANOTHER "neutraceuticals and moon phase trial" to cure preeclampsia. But this trial I need to see happen, so let's make it happen. Dr. Hart has convinced me that she has a point and so I want to help find 17 patients to test her hypothesis! Even if (especially if) the preeclampsia establishment seems to be dead set against her success.

ImmunoVEntion will develop a cell treatment (Treg cells) for preeclampsia not unlike the CAR-T cell treatments for cancer that we know today.

ImmunoVENtion's approach in words

ImmunoVention is developing a treatment for acute preeclampsia based on the observation that preeclamptic pregnant women display a lack of maternal-fetal tolerance at delivery.

Early in pregnancy, mom’s immune system (T cells) learns to specifically recognize the baby because half of baby is genetically dad = foreign. But while the maternal T cells develop, regulatory T cells (Treg) develop at the same time and suppress any T cell activation.

The result is a quiet immune system in healthy pregnancy. Despite the presence of fully functional T cells that recognize baby. In preeclamptic pregnancies, Treg mediated suppression does not work, and the T cells react against the babies’ cells. This reaction is not unlike a transplant rejection reaction.

ImmunoVention's hypothesis is that re-establishing maternal – fetal tolerance during preeclamptic pregnancy will quiet inflammation, endothelial activation, and hypertension and thereby reduce the risk for stroke and heart attack.

This will be achieved by taking out maternal cells, manipulating and expanding the regulatory T cells, and giving those now functional cells back to the mother. The goal is to develop an autologous Treg therapy that won’t add any compounds to the pregnant mom.

Link to the open access paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188250&type=printable

ImmunoVENtion's approach in other words

cells isolated from the blood of healthy pregnant women are exposed to cells from her baby in a dish.

The bar graph on the top right shows the measurements of growth, which indicates that the immune system rejects the "thing".

Exposing mom's cells to cells from her own baby (cord blood) does not result in proliferation (black bar). Removing the regulatory T cells, however, results in proliferation (grey bar on the right). This tells us 2 things: 1) there are cells in the dish that can recognize and proliferate against the cord blood and 2) this proliferation is suppressed by regulatory T cells.

In preeclamptic pregnancies, the lower pink outlined bars, exposing mom's cells to cord blood cells immediately results in proliferation (black bar) and doesn't change after removing regulatory T cells (grey bar).

This indicates that the regulatory T cells don't have an effect on effector T cells or the effector T cells are not "listenting" to the regulatory T cells.