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Attempts at antigen-specific tolerance—training the
immune system to stop reacting to a specific protein—have
mostly failed. Why?
Because we’ve been delivering the wrong signal through
the wrong route.
Injecting an autoantigen tells the immune system: Danger.
Delivering it orally or mucosally says: This is normal.
Learn to ignore it.
This is how the body builds tolerance in the first place.
And edible biologics are designed to replicate that
education.
How Tolerizing Vaccines Work
Tolerizing vaccines don’t aim to activate the immune
system.
They aim to re-educate it.
Where traditional vaccines teach the immune system to
recognize a threat and respond aggressively, tolerizing
vaccines do the opposite: they present an antigen in a
calm, familiar, and non-threatening context—so the
immune system learns to ignore it. The goal is not defense,
but detente.
This approach is especially valuable in autoimmune
diseases, allergic conditions, and chronic inflammatory
syndromes, where the immune system is misfiring against
harmless or self-derived proteins—like:
• Insulin in Type 1 diabetes
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