You probably get sick of me saying blah blah blah with my monoculture of views. But mine is just one view and I am not big headed enough to think it is the only view…..But I put my neck on the line to have opinions. Some people really don’t like my views and moan if I comment that there could be a chink in their story… However what is the point of social media if we simply sugar coat everything and say it is all wonderful and will cure MS tomorrow. Anyway today we have a Westerly and the wind is coming from the east. …… This is a crystal ball from Austria and they are putting their neck on the ..read more

During COVID-19 we asked people to supply and send in a Blood Spots…You said during MS awareness week that we hadn’t said what happened. So what did we do. Well we measured COVID-19 responses and what did we find…..Well it said people on disease modifying drugs made a COVID-19 vaccination response. You can read about this in these free articles. Tallantyre EC, Vickaryous N, Anderson V, Asardag AN, Baker D, Bestwick J, Bramhall K, Chance R, Evangelou N, George K, Giovannoni G, Godkin A, Grant L, Harding KE, Hibbert A, Ingram G, Jones M, Kang AS, Loveless S, Moat SJ, Robertson NP, Schmierer K ..read more

We have now seen four different anti-CD20 depleting monoclonal antibodies tested in phase III studies and these are using two routes one under the skin the other by infusion and this is either every 6 months intravenously or monthly at home under the skin. Are there differences….they both deplete B cells and keep them depleted but the marketeers want us to think there are differences. However you can’t have it both ways, if one causes less side effect does it work less well. In the trials the regulators and neuros are bottlers and allow their patients to suffer…What do I mean. The trials were ..read more

You asked about this paper…Here is the abstract it is in Cell Lui et al. Remyelination failure in diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) was thought to involve suppressed maturation of oligodendrocyte precursors; however, oligodendrocytes are present in MS lesions yet lack myelin production. We found that oligodendrocytes in the lesions are epigenetically silenced. Developing a transgenic reporter labeling differentiated oligodendrocytes for phenotypic screening, we identified a small-molecule epigenetic-silencing-inhibitor (ESI1) that enhances myelin production and ensheathment. ESI1 promotes ..read more

Hear comes the Sun… You wanted a new page so here it is ..read more

Is it surprising that your brain has something to say about what happens in your body, even if it happens to be about your own immune system. A very interesting publication in Nature shows that the vagus nerve monitors peripheral immune system activation and is even able to modulate it (albeit in mice). Cytokines that are released during inflammation can activate the vagus nerve, but there also seems to be two populations of vagal neurones that modulate pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses. They also demonstrated that removing this circuitry resulted in out of control inflammation ..read more

Look on the regulators website in UK is MHRA in Europe its the EMA and the FDA in the USA and there are many more. You said “I never head about neutralizing antibodies” Search “Natalizumab and INN” look for a link with EMA and look for EPAR or in US ” Natalizumab and label” or “Tysabri and Label” In goolge this is what you get both the FA and the EMA websites click on the links In the PDF look for immunogenicityIn FDA often in section 6.2 In Europe search (Press control [ctrl], F)for “immunogenicity” And in 4.8 So you can see if you have reduced efficacy here is means new lesions or relap ..read more

I was once talking about the effect of CD20-B cell depletion and the data was largely based on rituximab data and then someone asked what happened with ocrelizumab…and I said I’ve just told you…but they were having non of it it hadn’t been shown with ocrelizumab and therefore what was done with other anti-CD20 was not important….I’m not sure I buy this….Which is better start on high or low eficacy drug treatment…..you can’t work that one out unless you do it….Em. What is better go from low to mediumm or low to high efficacy agent?….You have to do the experiment because you can’t work it out…Em ..read more

I don’t need to say much but their are many papers talking about imaging hot microglia with TSPO-PET. Don’t believe me? This maybe the case in mice, but when it comes to humans it is very evident that TSPO is found in nerves, astroctyes, microglia and here we see oligodendrocytes, so whilst TSPO imaging in humans may be detect inflammation you can’t say it is hot microglia. Mature oligodendrocytes (OLs) arise from oligodendrocyte precursor cells that, in case of demyelination, are recruited at the lesion site to remyelinate the axons and therefore restore the transmission of nerve impulses. er ..read more

Event-Agenda-Croydon.docxDownload Last week I was invited to speak at the MS Society Day in Croydon. It was a truly refreshing F2F event, exceptionally well organised by the local MS Society branch – big thank you. Following Clare Walton, the MS Society’s Research Lead, I spoke about… ChariotMS! Please have a look at the slides, and if you or somebody you know might be interested in participating, please visit our website http://www.chariotms.com or email chariot@qmul.ac.uk, and we will help identify your nearest available trial centre. We are enrolling until the end of this year; so far 137/2 ..read more