(Yicai) Dec. 11 -- UK scientific journal Nature has selected Xu Huji, a rheumatism expert from Shanghai, for its list of ten people who helped shape science this year, thanks to his breakthrough achievement in chimeric antigen receptor t-cell therapy.

Xu's team was the world's first to use cells from an independent donor instead of from the people being treated to carry out CAR T-cell therapy and help three people suffering from severe rheumatism, an autoimmune disease that can cause joint pain, deformity, and dysfunction, achieving long-term mitigation, Nature said in the list released on Dec. 9.

Nature's 10 list also included Li Chunlai, deputy chief designer for China's Chang'e-6 mission, the country's moon exploration project, as the only other Chinese scientist besides Xu, who works at Naval Medical University's affiliated Shanghai Changzheng Hospital.

"If successful, the donor strategy could allow for mass production of CAR T-cell treatments, reducing their costs and extending their reach," according to Nature.

CAR T-cell therapy modifies the human body's T-cells, which have an immunity function "and have been designed to hunt down and eliminate B cells, a type of immune cell that sometimes runs amok in people with autoimmune disorders," Nature said. "CAR T-cell therapy is widely used to treat blood cancers involving malignant B cells, but it has also shown some promise for autoimmune diseases."

Du Bing, an immunologist at Shanghai's East China Normal University who was part of the team that developed the cells used in the trial, and his colleagues used a "CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing tool to knock out five genes from donor T-cells to prevent the grafted cells from attacking or being rejected by the patient's body," Nature noted, citing Du as saying that the team approached several doctors to try the cells for autoimmune disease, but no one except Xu accepted to take the risk.

Whether these patients having cell transplantations will face other risks remains to be seen, Xu said to Yicai in an interview in October.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev