The year I was born, Hollywood released the film Fantastic Voyage in which a submarine vehicle (and a crew of scientists) is shrunken and injected into the bloodstream of a nearly-assassinated diplomat. Though MS research released on Sunday isn?t as fanciful as that motion picture, it is certainly just as fantastic.
Using nanoparticles made from the same bio-degradable materials from which ?dissolving? stitches are fashioned, Northwestern University scientists have delivered myelin-mimicking antigens that ?trick? the immune system into no longer attacking the protective nerve sheath. To this point, the research has only been concluded on mice with MS, but researchers hope this delivery ?vehicle? will prove effective for many immune-mediated diseases, including Type 1 diabetes, some allergies, and possibly even asthma.
Similar research has been conducted using a patient?s own white blood cells to transfer antigens into the body. Though that process seems like a viable treatment avenue, it is very expensive and quite time-consuming (this new therapy is in Phase I/II trials now). The tiny (500 nanometers in diameter, which is the standard width of pits in the surface of contact lenses) particles of a polymer called poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLG) can be manufactured at a fraction of the price of modifying human white blood cells, so the researchers thought it seemed worth a try.
With funding from a coalition of interested parties, including the Myelin Repair Foundation, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, this nanoparticle breakthrough offers an entirely new avenue to delivery of immune modifying agents.
Stephen Miller, MD, an author of the study and the Judy Gugenheim Research Professor of Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, called this new methodology ?the holy grail? when he described the therapy in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The goal, according to Dr. Miller, is ?a therapy that is specific to the pathological immune response, in this case the body attacking myelin. Our approach resets the immune system so it no longer attacks myelin but leaves the function of the normal immune system intact.?
The idea of microscopic Trojan horses being injected into the blood so they can make it into the spleen ? where they would be ?cleaned up? like dying blood cells ? in order to create an immune tolerance might seem odd to some patients. That the antigen could directly inhibit the activation of the body?s T-cells from attacking only myelin has been the dream of many on more invasive immuno-modulating therapies.
Much work must be done and many review hurdles overcome before trials in humans can be approved. With so many people living with immune-related conditions like MS standing to benefit, one can only suspect that pressure will be placed on regulators to approve the next steps quickly.
Forty-six years have passed since shrunken surgeons were placed into a microscopic submarine and sent on a Fantastic Voyage into the human body. Whether this new discovery becomes useful science, we hope, should take far less time.
I for one will be keeping a keen eye on this research as it unfolds. We may very well have witnessed a first and important step? or it could, once again, be nothing more than a hopeful stumble. Either way, it will be one step closer to a real cure.
Wishing you and your family the best of health.
Cheers
Trevis
You can also follow me via our Life With MS Facebook page, on Twitter, and in our group on MS Connection.org. Also, check out our bi-monthly MS blog for the United Kingdom, look for our very special new monthly blog for the National MS Society, and don?t forget to check out TrevisLGleason.com.
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