MS Research Roundup: August 18, 2014

MS Research Roundup collects items of interest to multiple sclerosis researchers from around the Web. Send us your tips: tips@msdiscovery.org.

Longer-Acting Interferon β

A longer-acting form of interferon β-1a (Plegridy, Biogen Idec) was approved for relapsing-remitting MS by the U.S. Food and Drug administration on Friday. The same active ingredient is prescribed to about half of all people with MS, including Biogen’s first MS drug (Avonex). Plegridy can be taken less frequently than Avonex: once every 2 weeks compared to once weekly. The approval came less than a month after the European Commission approved this pegylated interferon for sale in 28 countries across the Atlantic. The approval was based primarily on findings from the ADVANCE trial, whose results were presented and published this spring. (Boston Globe, MedPage Today, Reuters)

Red Blood Cells to Deliver Drugs

A recent article in PBS’s NOVA Next highlighted the potential for red blood cells to become the next big thing in drug delivery. Red blood cells can be modified to carry all manner of cargo, including enzymes and small drug particles. There’s evidence that this method of drug delivery can be used to deliver antigens while bypassing the immune system. This is of course because the body won’t attack its own red blood cells, so scientists are using them to sneak treatments in through the back door. Some teams are experimenting with treating autoimmune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease with red blood cells and having success. Red blood cells were originally studied for drug delivery in the 1970s, but the AIDs crisis effectively shut down any research involving blood transfusions. Thanks to recent advances in medical technology, interest has picked up again. Red blood cells have some innate advantages over other mechanisms of drug delivery, such as nanotubes, because of their ability to work around the immune system. Hidde Ploegh, Ph.D., an immunologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, stresses that these applications are “fairly fanciful and very much in the distance,” but he and others said that modified red blood cells may one day be used to create a less excitable immune system. (PBS NOVA Next)

Corruption and Unproven MS Supplements

An unproven dietary supplement for MS was featured in recent news coverage of the corruption trial of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen. She and her husband are accused of taking bribes from businessman Jonnie Williams, allegedly to help boost the fortunes of his company, including a reception at the governor’s mansion for the launch of its product Anatabloc. According to one witness’s testimony, Maureen McDonnell told Ann Romney that the supplement could help cure her MS. The product, whose sales have been suspended, contains anatabine, an alkaloid found in tobacco, as well as other ingredients, including vitamin A and vitamin D₃. The company, Star Scientific, was recently renamed, relocated, and restaffed with new leadership as Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals in Sarasota, Florida. The company website does not list MS as a therapeutic area but reports it is exploring “novel targets associated with cholinergic agonists and the inhibition of the transcription factor, NF-kappaB” for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The company and its collaborators have published results of anatabine in mice with an MS-like inflammatory condition. (MarketWatch, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, USA Today)

Running With MS

The love-hate relationship many people have with exercise becomes even more complicated in MS. As described in a first-person account, a rainy half-marathon became more than a metaphor for clinical psychologist Cristalle Sese, Psy.D., who had fallen twice on training runs in the year since she was diagnosed with MS. In the first mile of the race, Sese shuffled, stumbled, and lost feeling in her legs. In the article, she confronts both the signs of a potential relapse and the uncertainties she and others face with relapsing-remitting MS. “We don’t know what our bodies will do next,” she wrote. “MS will either kind of change my life or really change my life, and there is no way to know which course will be mine.” As researchers continue to debate the benefits and risks of exercise in MS, there is a trend toward advising people with MS to engage in more physical activity. (The Atlantic)

Read other MS Research Roundups.