Society-Funded Investigators Find New Information on Immune Cell Activity in MS
September 2, 2020
The team that helped to drive development of MS therapies that target immune B cells – such as Ocrevus® (ocrelizumab, Genentech) – now reports new findings on how these cells might be activated, a finding that could enable a new generation of more targeted B cell therapies. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco, funded by the National MS Society and others, looked at B cells in the blood and spinal fluid in 23 people with early MS prior to treatment. The results showed an abnormal number of activated B cells in the spinal fluid, and yield important information on the genes and proteins instructing the inflammatory activity of these cells.
Further research can reveal more information on these genes and proteins, and whether they can be targeted to develop more specific therapies that only eliminate the “bad” B cells in MS.
Read more on the UCSF website
Read the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Ocrevus is a registered trademark of Genentech