big news

There are days where you can't find anything to post about. Those days are usually very hectic and stressful as you scramble to find a topic of discussion with which to regale to your friends and entertain your viewers.

I hate those days.

On days like today, it's nice to have the brightest news simply fall into my lap:

In a spectacular display of cellular engineering, Rafei and colleagues have managed to cure a mouse model of multiple sclerosis. I KNOW. What's even better about this story is the whole entire process was absolutely serendipitous - Rafei et al. were actually attempting to stimulate an immune response in order to induce tumor rejection in mice, but ended up suppressing an immune response instead.

The story goes like this: A mice model for multiple sclerosis exists and is known as experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE). It's basically what it sounds like - selective inflammation of myelinated components by way of an immune response. While certain drugs exist to slow this process of neuronal degradation (they mention interferon-beta, glatiramer acetate, mitoxantrone and natalizumab; I've only heard of the first and the last), there is no lasting cure. Essentially, Rafei et al. engineered a 'fusokine', a combination of two signalling molecules granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin-15 (IL-15) to make GIFT15. GIFT15 treatment of certain immune cells creates immune suppressive regulatory B cells (Breg). Essentially this is basic organic chemistry at play: The GM-CSF moiety creates physical steric hindrance to the IL-15 domain that leads to disrupted signalling downstream of the IL-15 receptor causing hyperactivation of STAT-3. STAT3 phosphorylation induces B-lymphocyte maturation and subsequently causes suppression of PAX5 transcription factor, resulting in upregulation of CD138 and suppression of CD19. This signalling cascade essentially results in immune suppression; mice with EAE symptoms and neuropathology experienced a complete reversal in their disease course.

While this is a fantastically magical result, it should be taken into consideration that this is an animal model of MS and may not be directly applicable to humans. I remember there being an awesome drug that worked on Parkinson's in mice years ago that didn't actually do anything but kill people in clinical trials. I really do hope that this translates well to humans - we could see in as little as 10 years the emergence of new drugs to cure MS. Think about it - a cure for MS in our lifetime is possible.

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Rafei, M., Hsieh, J., Zehntner, S., Li, M., Forner, K., Birman, E., et al. (2009) A granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor and interleukin-15 fusokine induces a regulatory B cell population with immune suppressive properties. Nature Medicine: Advance Online Publication, doi:10.1038.