Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease resulting from damage to the fatty insulating covering around nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord called ‘myelin’. In MS, the body’s immune system, which normally fights infections, mistakenly attacks myelin, leading to inflammation, cell damage and neurological symptoms.
Dr Vivien Li and her team aim to develop a treatment targeting this ‘mistaken’ activation of the immune system in MS.
This approach uses a person’s own blood immune cells. These cells are treated with anti-inflammatory signals in the laboratory and returned to the person living with MS. Once reintroduced, the modified cells help reduce the disease-causing immune cells that drive inflammation and cause nerve cell damage in MS.
This approach, known as tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy, offers advantages over existing therapies as it targets key early drivers of MS without dampening down the immune system too broadly.
Dr Li and her team have already developed techniques to grow these immune cells from blood samples and modify them to adopt protective (anti-inflammatory) rather than disease-causing (pro-inflammatory) characteristics.
They have also identified relevant proteins involved in driving MS, particularly in people who carry a genetic risk factor. This allows selective targeting of the disease-causing immune cells, rather than broadly suppressing the immune system.
One of the major aims of this project was to identify people who would be most likely to benefit from this type of cell therapy.
The team recruited 42 people with MS, isolated immune cells from their blood and grew these in the laboratory under anti-inflammatory conditions.
They performed testing for two genetic changes linked to an increased risk of MS (HLA-DR15 and MERTK rs7422195) to see if these influenced the characteristics of the immune cells grown in the lab.
They found that cells grown from people with the genetic changes were more likely to develop anti-inflammatory properties when grown under these laboratory conditions.
Around 40% of the MS population carry the HLA-DR15 genetic change, and 35% carry the MERTK genetic change linked to increased MS risk, so this provides important information to help identify the group that may be most likely to benefit from this cell therapy.
The second aim of the project is to test this cell therapy in a laboratory model of MS. Dr Li has established the laboratory model of MS and generated the anti-inflammatory cells for treatment. The next step will be to determine the effects of these cells on disease in this model.
Updated 31 March 2026Â
MSWA
$225,000
2025
3 years
Current project
