Taking cellular therapy to treat MS toward clinical testing

MS is a disease resulting from damage to the fatty insulating covering around nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord called myelin. It occurs when the body’s immune system starts to attack the myelin, leading to inflammation, cell damage, and neurological symptoms.

Dr Vivien Li and her team aim to develop a new way to treat MS using a person’s own blood immune cells. These cells are treated with anti-inflammatory signals in the laboratory and then re-administered to the person living with MS. The treated cells then target and dampen down the disease-causing immune cells that promote inflammation and cause nerve cell damage in MS.

Dr Li and her team have developed techniques to grow these immune cells from the blood samples of people living with MS and established the conditions that can modify their behaviour, so they assume anti-inflammatory (protective) rather than disease-causing characteristics. Dr Li has also identified the proteins involved in MS that enable selective targeting of the disease-causing immune cells.

This approach has advantages over existing therapies as it targets key initiating events in MS, avoids the risks of dampening down the immune system too broadly, and could treat both relapsing and progressive MS. This project continues Dr Li’s existing work toward clinical translation.

The next steps involve identifying people living with MS who may be suitable candidates for this therapy and testing this approach in a laboratory model of MS.