MS Research Roundup: July 28, 2014
Stem Cell Clinical Trial; Black Mouse Wake-Up Call; Vitamin D Associated With More Severe Acute Optic Neuritis; Nanotechnology Research Project
MS Research Roundup collects items of interest to multiple sclerosis researchers from around the Web. Send us your tips: tips@msdiscovery.org.
Headlines Tout Stem Cell Clinical Trial
Newspaper stories of remarkable stem cell treatments often involve unproven and dubious procedures. So we were pleased to read about an Oklahoma woman with progressive relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) who told a local reporter she’s feeling a new surge of energy, thanks to an autologous hematopoietic stem cell treatment she received in conjunction with a randomized phase 3 clinical trial sponsored by Northwestern University in Chicago. Pamela Gooch, 41, who suffered extreme fatigue, now has the energy to play with her children. Often, headlines feature patients who visit other countries and spend exorbitant amounts of money on the usually false promise that they will receive effective stem cell therapies that will cure their MS. At best, nothing happens. At worst, complications from their procedure can leave them worse off than before. Autologous hematopoietic stem cell treatment is often regarded as high-risk. But principal investigator Richard Burt, M.D., and his colleagues at Northwestern University call this is a misconception, saying advances in the field have lowered the risk. (Edmond Sun, Northwestern University Division of Immunotherapy and Autoimmune Diseases)
Black Mouse Wake-Up Call
Black 6 (C57BL/6J), the most widely used laboratory mouse strain—and popular for experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a model of human MS—has a potential defect in translating proteins in the central nervous system. The defect was revealed by a second mutation in a gene that rescues the stalled ribosome. Together, the two mutations caused massive nerve cell death in the mice and led to the discovery of the first tissue-specific expression of a transfer RNA (tRNA) in vertebrates and a new mechanism for neurodegeneration, researchers reported July 24, 2014, in Science. The impact of these findings occurs on many levels. The “strain specificity of the observed neurodegeneration sounds a wake-up call,” wrote Jennifer Darnell, Ph.D., of Rockefeller University in New York, in an accompanying commentary. The paper also “establishes a paradigm for understanding how a person’s genetic makeup affects whether a specific mutation will lead to disease or be tolerated," she wrote. The neurodegenerative phenotype went away when researchers tested the rescue gene mutation in another mouse strain. The Black 6 tRNA defect appears to be specific to neurons, senior author Susan Ackerman, Ph.D., of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, told MSDF. (Jackson Laboratory, The Scientist)
Vitamin D and Acute Optic Neuritis
A study published on June 17 in the journal Neurology identified an unexpected link between vitamin D levels and acute optic neuritis (AON) in MS patients. The study looked at the clinical and demographic features associated with AON severity and recovery in 253 adults and 38 children whose first symptom of MS was AON. Interestingly, first author Muhammad Taimur Malik, M.D., and co-authors found that higher vitamin D levels were associated with more severe AON attacks in a subgroup of patients for whom blood samples were available within 6 months of an attack. A Medscape summary of the study noted that, of course, correlation does not equal causation, and that the sample size is relatively small. Additionally, the research team found that men and patients who suffered severe AON attack had a worse recovery outcome and that vitamin D was not correlated with recovery. (Medscape, Neurology)
USC Student Aspires to Cure MS With Nanotechnology
University of Southern California Ph.D. student Kun Yue is taking on an ambitious project to figure out whether nanotechnology may one day be useful in MS. The end goal of that project is still vague, but in theory it could result in some sort of implantable or injectable nano-sized device that could fix neuronal damage. Yue’s first goal is bite-sized compared to this massive project. He aims to build a model of selected brain circuits to better understand how they work. His project is part of a larger USC project to reverse-engineer the brain. (University of Southern California)
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