Figure 1.

Peptide therapy restores immune homeostasis via natural antigen-specific immunoregulatory pathways. Highly soluble peptides are taken up by immature dendritic cells and presented to antigen-specific CD4⁺ T cells. The CD4⁺ T cells have one of the three potential fates; death, anergy, or the expansion/generation of a regulatory T-cell phenotype. The regulatory T cells suppress the pathogenic T cell via IL-10 secretion. Each peptide has the capacity to induce a different population of regulatory T cells.