Daily Science Dose

For today, some cool news - a new vaccine looks quite promising. It’s a vaccine to treat MS and, if the technology is effective, it might someday be applied to other autoimmune diseases like…don’t make me say it.

Six degrees of inflammation.

The vaccine works by targeting the immune cells gone wrong, the ones that attack the myelin sheaths, which are, like, the things that protect nerve fibers. That’s what happens in MS - those sheaths get attacked, the nerves are exposed, damaged, and then you’ve got some troubles.

Pic o’ demyelination and inflammation, courtesy of CDC/Dr. Karp, Emory University
Public Health Image Library #2774

Here’s a link to the report, from Archives of Neurology: site and PDF.

The article says, among other things:

“Recent work by ourselves and others has demonstrated that DNA vaccines can be used…to down-regulate or alter an ongoing immune response in various animal models of autoimmunity, providing the framework for the human studies we describe herein.”

There’s evidence out there that vaccines can lessen autoimmune disease activity, and this trial, using a vaccine to treat MS, seems to support that theory. There’s no talk, at this point, of the vaccine being a cure for MS, but it certainly seems to be able to, at least in the short term, lessen the…how you say…ferocity of the body’s attack on itself. It tells some of those naughty cells to, like, calm down.

Here’s the basics of what they discovered in this study:

“We have demonstrated in this first, to our knowledge, in-human trial of a DNA vaccine for autoimmune disease that the approach is safe and well tolerated.”

Looks like there aren’t any horrific side effects.

“We describe evidence for induction of favorable trends on brain MRI, indicating a reduction in the inflammatory response in the CNS.”

Brain isn’t attacked as much when the vaccine was given. Less brain lesions. Always a good thing, no?

“BHT-3009 reduced antigen-specific immune responses both in the peripheral immune system and the CNS, including reductions in proliferation of IFN-–producing, myelin-reactive CD4+ T cells and levels of CSF antibodies directed against myelin.”

There’s proof, from blood work and spinal fluid, that the vaccine decreased levels of thingies that attack the myelin sheaths, as well as a decrease in antibodies that tell thingies to attack the myelin sheaths. This would seem to indicate that less attacking of the myelin sheaths is going on.

Hooray!

Kinda exciting, no?

MS, multiple sclerosis, myelin, vaccine, Archives of Neurology, BHT-3009, autoimmune, trial