Hopeful news! Mouse Cure Raises Hopes for MS (multiple sclerosis)

[1776Forever]

Mouse Cure Raises Hopes for MS

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: August 12, 2009
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

Primary source: Nature Medicine
Source reference:
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.2003.html

An experimental treatment cured mice of a disease similar to multiple sclerosis, and Canadian researchers are optimistic it will have the same effect on humans.

The therapy involved extracting B cells from the mice, treating them with a so-called "fusokine," and re-injecting them, according to Jacques Galipeau, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues.

The treatment completely suppressed experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a mouse model of multiple sclerosis, Galipeau and colleagues said online in Nature Medicine.

The key, the researchers said, is the "fusokine" -- a laboratory construct of the immune stimulatory molecules interleukin-15 and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor.

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This is encouraging but as my son who has Progressive MS says he hopes they (Big Pharma) don't stop this from coming to reality. Big Pharma makes millions on MS meds and they would loose out on it if a cure was found. Sorry for being cynical but it happens just like the car industry killed the electric car. I pray they don't defeat this!

[gleaner]

1. I hope that this works too ...

My best wishes to your son. I have MS too. I have referred to it in the past on the board only as an "autoimmune" disease. I like people to see who I am before they see me only as a specific disease.

I have lived with MS for 30 years, and it is to the secondary progressive stage, though I still have remissions. I have hope for stem cell research, too. I hope that research can now continue unfettered by ignorance as well. It probably would not help me, but it would help people who have not been sick for as long as I have.

Good luck to your son and the rest of your family. I'll keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

[1776Forever]

3. Thank you for your prayers.....I pray for all those affected by MS also.

I never knew about how evasive this disease can be until my son started to loose his brain cells and his bladder function. Those brave people like you and my son who live to fight another day are to be commended. I pray for all those like you and my son who fight the good fight everyday.

Blessings - :hi:

[petersjo02]

2. That's great news!

Second-to-last sentence should read "...MS meds and the
would lose out on it...."

[trotsky]

4. Look, try and use some common sense here.

MS is a progressive disease that leads to death. "Big Pharma" might make money selling them meds to alleviate the symptoms for awhile, but it's ultimately a losing battle.

A CURE for MS would sell like crazy - AND allow the patient to resume a normal life, becoming a much more longer-living customer for other medications they might need later in life.

It's just crazy to start assuming that the nebulous "big pharma" is going to kill a cure. We have cures for many types of cancer, many maladies that used to only have alleviating treatments.

(Oh, and by the way, the car industry didn't kill the electric car, either.)

[MoralSyncretism]

5. I agree. Besides treatment makes billions too

for pharmas. Gene therapy is a treatment process; a treatment regimen would require doses manufactured by those very same pharma (biotech) companies. Believe me, no "cure" would be killed by Big Pharma -- there's plenty of profit to be made treating a myriad of diseases.

Every large pharma has millions invested in research and development, trying mightily to come up with breakthrough disease-treating, disease-curing, and disease-preventing therapies and medications.

And besides, if a company perfected a "cure" for a serious illness, wouldn't that company want to be KNOWN for that? That success would mean bigger profits.