Ottawa doctors behind breakthrough

[Whisper]

Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

Hope this link works, I'm not great at posting stuff. I thought this trial very interesting!
Lorraine:)

[agate]

Thanks for posting about this, Lorraine! The link works fine.

I'm going to be trying to find out more about this.

[SalpalSally]

Sounds good to me. I'd do it, if they'd let me...
May be too advanced or just too old. Bah

[renee]

Sounds like researchers have refined accumulated knowledge to the point where it is
as safe as crossing a NY City street.
!%- sign me up.

I can live with my disabilities but progression is always pukey.

Oh Canada...
4-20, Grassman.


WHO'S OLD???

[Virginia]

Thanks Lorraine, sounds good doesn't it? I would be too old for something as radical as this, but we can dream that maybe something will come along for all of us.

Yea for our friends in Canada!!

[agate]

At least they're trying to come up with something. When I was a kid there was a man in town who had MS. He lived out his days confined to his home--many decades. Back then I guess it was "Diagnose and adios."

[agate]

I found the abstract for the article in Annals of Neurology, March 2013, pp. 341-54. This isn't "the" breakthrough study, but just a preliminary to it. There will be another report coming along later if I understood the Ottawa Citizen article right.

Objective

To define changes in phenotype and functional responses of reconstituting T cells in patients with aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS) treated with ablative chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT).


Methods

Clinical and brain magnetic resonance imaging measures of disease activity were monitored serially in patients participating in the Canadian MS HSCT Study. Reconstitution kinetics of immune-cell subsets were determined by flow cytometry, whereas thymic function was assessed using T-cell receptor excision circle analyses as well as flow cytometry measurements of CD31⁺ recent thymic emigrants (RTEs). Functional assays were performed to track central nervous system–autoreactive antigen-specific T-cell responses, and the relative capacity to generate Th1, Th17, or Th1/17 T-cell responses.


Results

Complete abrogation of new clinical relapses and new focal inflammatory brain lesions throughout the 2 years of immune monitoring following treatment was associated with sustained decrease in naive T cells, in spite of restoration of both thymic function and release of RTEs during reconstitution. Re-emergence as well as in vivo expansion of autoreactive T cells to multiple myelin targets was evident in all patients studied. The reconstituted myelin-specific T cells exhibited the same Th1 and Th2 responses as preablation myelin-reactive T cells. In contrast, the post-therapy T-cell repertoire exhibited a significantly diminished capacity for Th17 responses.


Interpretation

Our results indicate that diminished Th17 and Th1/17 responses, rather than Th1 responses, are particularly relevant to the abrogation of new relapsing disease activity observed in this cohort of patients with aggressive MS following chemoablation and HSCT. ANN NEUROL 2013;73:341–354