MS Research Roundup: December 2, 2014
Fingolimod Falls Short for PPMS; Expanded U.S. Clinical Trial Data; New Neuroinflammatory T Cell Subset; Writing With Style
MS Research Roundup collects items of interest to multiple sclerosis researchers from around the Web. Send us your tips: tips@msdiscovery.org.
Fingolimod Falls Short for PPMS
Novartis released disappointing news on Monday that fingolimod (Gilenya) failed to outperform a placebo in reducing multiple disability measures in patients with primary progressive MS (PPMS). The phase 3 INFORMS trial set out to determine whether fingolimod could delay the time to sustained disability progression in patients treated for 3 years, but the drug fell short of that goal. “We understand this news is very disappointing for those affected by PPMS and involved in its management,” Vasant Narasimhan, M.D., global head of development at Novartis, said in the press release. There are no proven effective treatments for PPMS, which affects approximately 10% of people with MS. Fingolimod is approved for relapsing forms of MS. The oral medication initially became a candidate for PPMS treatment when experiments in animals suggested that it may promote remyelination. Nevertheless, fingolimod is still slated to become Novartis’ best-selling drug by 2016, potentially racking up $3.6 billion in annual sales. (Bloomberg Businessweek, ClinicalTrials.gov, MS Research Blog, Novartis Pharmaceuticals)
Reporting on Failed Clinical Trials Too
“The amount of clinical data that drug companies must share with the public could soon vastly expand under a U.S. regulation proposed [on November 19],” Jocelyn Kaiser wrote in Science. “Trial sponsors would need to report summary results for drugs and devices that are never approved—and not just for products that reach the market—under the proposal.” The proposed rule changes by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services call for expanding registration of clinical trials and providing summary trial results to ClinicalTrials.gov. The notice was welcomed by the All Trials campaign, which aims to register all trials around the world, past and future, and disclose both methods and results in order to protect the public from the health risks of hidden information. MSDF supports efforts to make clinical trial and other data available to fully inform future research and public health and to speed the search for a cure for MS and other diseases. (AllTrials, Pharmalot/Wall Street Journal, Science)
Helping Out With Neuroinflammation
Earlier this year, researchers reported they found a new subset of T helper cells that churn out a cytokine associated with MS flares in people, called granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). That was the lab of Christina Zielinski, M.D., of Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. Now, another team from the National University of Singapore names those cells Th-GM and, surprisingly, shows they may seem to be programmed by the same messenger (STAT5) that calls in calming regulatory T cells. The paper is from the lab of Xin-Yuan Fu, and the first author is postdoctoral fellow Wanqiang Sheng. The results may explain the link between pathogenic T helper cells and dysregulated autoimmune signaling involving another inflammatory cytokine, IL-7, wrote Dietmar Herndler-Brandstetter, Ph.D., and Richard Flavell, Ph.D., of Yale University in an accompanying commentary to the paper published online November 21 in Cell Research. (Cell Research, EurekAlert!, FierceBiotech Research)
The Curse of Knowledge
We know that many MS researchers feel strongly about writing clearly for other scientists and clinicians. For example, Daniel Reich, M.D., Ph.D., a neurologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, borrowed a writing workshop technique from his wife, a poet. Authors of papers in progress present their drafts to other lab members for feedback to perfect the writing and reasoning. Reich expected that most issues would center on technical information being explained too archaically, but the discussion can be more substantial. “It often emerges that different people have different ideas about the main questions a paper is addressing,” he told MSDF in an email. Along these lines, MSDF recommends The Sense of Style (Viking, 2014). Author Steven Pinker, Ph.D., draws on decades of linguistics and cognitive science to explain why good people write bad prose. (It’s hard to conceptualize what others don’t know about what you know.) He offers tips for navigating the pitfalls of explaining things to other intelligent and sophisticated people who happen not to know something you know. And don’t forget to be careful about proofreading. One paper became a social media meme when the authors accidentally neglected to replace a reference to someone else’s “crappy” paper with a proper citation (which has since been corrected). (Altmetric, Retraction Watch, Slate, Vox)
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