HUGE Multiple Sclerosis breakthrough

[PedroDaGr8]

This is an absolutely huge breakthrough for people suffering from MS. They basically harvest stem cells from the patient, wipe out the persons ENTIRE immune system with chemotherapy, then regrow the immune system in the person from those stem cells. It basically reverts the immune system to its original state, before it started attacking the myelin.


In a small phase II trial of 24 MS patients, the treatment halted or reversed the disease in 70 percent of patients for three years after the transplant. Eight patients saw that improvement last for seven and a half years, researchers report in the Lancet. This means that some of those patients went from being wheelchair-bound to walking and being active again. But to reach that success, many suffered through severe side effects, such as life threatening infections and organ damage from toxicity brought on by the aggressive chemotherapy required to annihilate the body’s immune system. One patient died from complications of the treatment, which represents a four percent fatality rate.


http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/risky-stem-cell-treatment-reverses-ms-in-70-of-patients-in-small-study/

This is the first time ever, that patients have been actually treated and more or less had symptoms revert (if not cured) by any treatment of MS.

[suncat05]

This is very good news for those of us that have family with this disease. Thanks for the news, Pedro.

[Catonahottinroof]

I've lived with MS for the last 10 years. I will take the wait and see attitude as big Pharma has very little incentive to cure an MS patient when they can extract $50-60K per year in MS drugs from them.

[PedroDaGr8]

I've lived with MS for the last 10 years. I will take the wait and see attitude as big Pharma has very little incentive to cure an MS patient when they can extract $50-60K per year in MS drugs from them.

I hate to burst your bubble but I work in the biotech industry. Big Pharma just doesn't work this way. They would much rather make $100k off you this year, than $50-60K/yr. They like many industries, don't look forward long distance very well. Additionally, the drugs for this treatment have already been approved. The chemotherapy drugs they use have been around for a long time. Reverting your own cells into stem cells if I remember correctly, falls under surgical procedure which requires a different set of proofs (much cheaper and easier) than a drug trial and don't require a pharma involvement anyways. I'm sorry to hear about your MS, it is a horrible disease that I hope can actually be cured in the future.

[CitizenBBN]

It sounds like the biggest problem with this avenue of treatment is the chemo to destroy the immune system. Get through that and the chances don't look bad, but I don't even know how one would reduce the risks of the chemo b/c the risks come from having basically no immune system, which is the requirement for rebooting it.

[Catonahottinroof]

You're seeing this with your biotech industry blinders on. Biotech's interest is to keep me as a lifetime customer, not to cure the ailment for $100k this year. They'd much rather have me pay $56k per year till I die for Tecfidera that I take that tends to negate the symptoms.
Many of the drugs to treat MS are already in play, many as Leukemia drugs and have been prescribed as such since the 70's, so the tech for these has been around for some time, but linking them to MS treatment within T-cells is the new development within the last few years.
The best gains in MS treatment is actually coming through dietary means. Read up on AIP or Wahl's Protocol for evidence of that and that becomes the bigger threat to big pharma losing customers.

I hate to burst your bubble but I work in the biotech industry. Big Pharma just doesn't work this way. They would much rather make $100k off you this year, than $50-60K/yr. They like many industries, don't look forward long distance very well. Additionally, the drugs for this treatment have already been approved. The chemotherapy drugs they use have been around for a long time. Reverting your own cells into stem cells if I remember correctly, falls under surgical procedure which requires a different set of proofs (much cheaper and easier) than a drug trial and don't require a pharma involvement anyways. I'm sorry to hear about your MS, it is a horrible disease that I hope can actually be cured in the future.

[PedroDaGr8]

It sounds like the biggest problem with this avenue of treatment is the chemo to destroy the immune system. Get through that and the chances don't look bad, but I don't even know how one would reduce the risks of the chemo b/c the risks come from having basically no immune system, which is the requirement for rebooting it.

Yeah, it is not the most eloquent of treatments. There might be a day in the future where we can figure out how to reprogram the immune system without chemo. Not any time soon though, we aren't near to having that level of knowledge about the immune system. We are still finding new immune cell types and how you make those. Immunobiology is still quite young as a discipline.


You're seeing this with your biotech industry blinders on. Biotech's interest is to keep me as a lifetime customer, not to cure the ailment for $100k this year. They'd much rather have me pay $56k per year till I die for Tecfidera that I take that tends to negate the symptoms.
Many of the drugs to treat MS are already in play, many as Leukemia drugs and have been prescribed as such since the 70's, so the tech for these has been around for some time, but linking them to MS treatment within T-cells is the new development within the last few years.
The best gains in MS treatment is actually coming through dietary means. Read up on AIP or Wahl's Protocol for evidence of that and that becomes the bigger threat to big pharma losing customers.

They aren't blinders, I see how the decisions are ACTUALLY made, not some conspiracy theory myth that just happens to sound good. Biotech isn't any different than most industries in that it is utterly HORRIBLE at planning for the long term. If a CEO has a choice between making good quarters for the next 10yrs (your treatment model) or great quarters for the next two (cure model). Without fail, the CEO will choose the latter, so that he can look great, get his huge bonuses and get out with a huge severance if need be. Even if two companies DO have the foresight, there will be one that doesn't and when that one goes the other two will follow because they have to. Their treatment functionally becomes worthless now that there is a cure. It is just like all of the companies that outsourced manufacturing to China KNOWING that the Chinese companies would steal their IP. It made the immediate quarter results look good, so the CEO was happy. They didn't care about the company 5 yrs down the road, they cared about now. I've seen it time and time again, both in companies I worked for and in companies that friends have worked for. Trust me, if I had actually seen the reverse, I would be up in arms and complaining. I never fucked around when lives were on the line. Thankfully, neither did my colleagues.

I get that the Big Pharma doesn't want a cure thing makes for a good story, the fact is it just isn't true. The ACTUAL reason there aren't more cures is that it is DAMN HARD to make a cure. Way way way harder than treating symptoms. You have to devise a way to entirely reverse a very complex system. With a treatment you treat specific singular pathways, those are relatively easier to find and develop a treatment. Look how long it took for us to find human applicable uses for CRISPR. CRISPR going to prove to be VERY interesting for latent viral related infections but even that is at least another decade down the road because like I said, finding cures is REALLY damn hard. Even more so, finding a cure that doesn't accidentally mess up a bunch of other stuff is even harder. This is why DNA treatment hasn't come about for genetic disorders yet. Every time we have tried so far , things go haywire and the patients develop lots of cancer.

[Catonahottinroof]

You and I will agree to disagree here. Funny how you were oblivious in your response to the last bit of my comment. I agree that finding a cure is tough, but from my perspective, it does not seem to be the priority. It's not a conspiracy theory and I know hundreds of MS patients who are of the same opinion as me.
Proper nutrition is making big gains with MS that doesn't involve blowing up the immune system, subjecting the brain to PML infection or a variant of leukemia due to the "latest drug".

[PedroDaGr8]

You and I will agree to disagree here. Funny how you were oblivious in your response to the last bit of my comment. I agree that finding a cure is tough, but from my perspective, it does not seem to be the priority. It's not a conspiracy theory and I know hundreds of MS patients who are of the same opinion as me.
Proper nutrition is making big gains with MS that doesn't involve blowing up the immune system, subjecting the brain to PML infection or a variant of leukemia due to the "latest drug".

I didn't ignore it, I just don't have enough knowledge on it to comment. I tend to refrain from commenting on things I don't know enough about. If you found something that helps you, then good for you I hope it keeps helping.

[dan_bgblue]

Mechanisms identified to restore myelin sheaths after injury or in multiple sclerosis (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200824105529.htm)

[PedroDaGr8]

Mechanisms identified to restore myelin sheaths after injury or in multiple sclerosis (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200824105529.htm)

Wow that is a very interesting and promising discovery!