The search for an MS vaccine continues
Submitted by art on Thu, 2002-08-08 06:38.
From August 2002 Datamonitor: "As a new approach to the treatment of MS, vaccines have the potential to be both efficacious and cost effective. But can a vaccine be developed as a viable treatment for MS? Vaccines offer an innovative therapeutic approach and may result in an expanded CNS market, but may also pose a threat to currently available drugs."
Cart before the horse?
MS Vaccine
Re:MS Vaccine
#3,849,550 nov.19,'74theraputic copolymer
the developers claimed a vaccine like protection for animals treated for several days soon after challenge typically resulting in eae. these animals were protected from subsaquent attempts to give them eae even without more copolymer.
the initial dose regimens were extremely high relative to the (inadequate IMHO) dose we are given now.
i suspect the initial period of adjustment to cop-1 involves an alteration of some type to our immune systems. can't characterize it though. and i've experimented with very high doses on myself without ill effect.
so there's no reason i can see for not trying higher initial doses at least in animal experiments in order to try duplicating the very promising results described in the patent document.
this is one of the issues i hope to address when my little lab is operational.
regards
ed
Re:MS Vaccine
it's a mule
but i think it was zang at baylor who first turned things on their head by taking MSr's blood. then seperating out the leukocytes that go after MOG, MBP, PLP and any other myelin components. after getting enough of these he deactivated them by i think irradiating them. then he reinjected them prolly along with an adjuvant to stimulate an immune response.
the body learns to treat these autoimmune immune cells as invaders and destroys them. classic vaccine strategy turned on it's head using the immune system to attack itself.
the autoimmune cells become the pathogen.
there've been studies and as far as i know it's gone pretty well. it seems to require a "booster" as the immune system learns to sidestep the "banned" targets and starts eating myelin again after a while. (fwiw i call this "antigen creep") the statistical outliers ignored in the original process become the centralplayers in the autoimmune attack and require periodic re-"vaccinations".
one school of thought is to make vaccines for each individual while some groups are trying to make a one size fits all vaccine. got my doubts about the latter.
i've not followed this recently. many others have since picked up his trail. there are several groups working it now. prolly new twists i've never heard of.
regards
ed