For decades, a woman named Mary suffered from consuming delusions. Long-lost professional colleagues were meddling with her life; someone was spying on her through a camera in the showerhead; her eldest daughter was conspiring against her and putting poison on her pizza.
"Natural killer cells have evolved to seek and destroy abnormal cells," says Nadir Mahmood, president of Nkarta, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, California. "And if that's deep enough to drive an immune-system reset, then you can have the reconstitution of a healthy and naive immune system."
It is estimated that 700,000 Americans are currently afflicted with alopecia areata, with rates higher in minority communities, showcasing the urgent need for effective treatments.
