Valentine’s Day for people with multiple sclerosis: promoting brain repair through remyelination
Schedule
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
15:00 UTC
Alasdair Coles
Professor
Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge
Host: Cambridge Neuro
Recording
Open recording
Event Information
Recording
Available
Host
Cambridge Neuro
Duration
70 minutes
Abstract
Current disease-modifying therapies in multiple sclerosis are all focused on suppressing the inflammatory phase of the disease. This has been extremely successful, and it is doubtful that significantly more efficacious anti-inflammatory treatments will be found. However, it remains the case that people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis acquire disability on treatment, and enter the secondary progressive phase. I argue that we now need treatments that prevent neuronal degeneration. The most promising approach is to prevent axons degenerating by remyelination. Since the discovery that the adult brain contains stem cells which can remyelinate, the problem now is how to promote endogenous remyelination, and how to know when we have achieved this! We have successfully identified one drug which promotes remyelination but unfortunately it is too toxic for use in the clinic. So the hunt continues.
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