Autoantibodies to MLC1 identified in a small group of NMOSD-like patients

The useful part

Neuromyelitis Optica gets another target – The MS-Blog Skip to the content Close Menu Tweet For years we have been searching and questioning new targets in multiple sclerosis. Now if EBV was the target in MS…the same argument goes for Lupus and other conditions and so it would surely be be MS one week and lupus the next. However until you get rid of EBV and MS goes away I will keep an open mind.

How it works

• The best way to show that MS is an autoimmunity is to induce immune tolerance to the target and it goes away.
• What does this mean for MS…perhaps little but it shows that similar conditions may have different causes, it creates new diseases that may get different treatments e.g.
• However, for several patients within this disease spectrum, the target of the autoimmune response remains unknown.
• How come he has not left a team behind to continue on where he left things?
• I have to say academic life is not easy and ProfAs last post-doc had enough of science life (Not due to ProfA….but it was more cost-effective to give up work than deal with child care).

What to take from it

You can take antibodies against this an put them into animals or animal brain cultures and they cause problems so they are pathogenic. You can take antibodies for MS and put them into mice and they can cause neurological problems. It importantly creates an orphan disease with a target…,If you want to try develop antigen specific therapy these would be good candidate conditions to try the technology.

Example or evidence

• The 10yr old has already lined up a 1 week intro at Marie Curie's research institute in Paris (via an acquaintance).
• The beasties tell us that different individual mouse strains react to different bits of different proteins at different times.
• MS was also more dividied as there were different types such as Devics and Balos an Marburg MS….but Devics MS was split off to be named neuromyelitis optica (NMO) and it was found that a target was astrocytic.
• Antibodies against a water channel called aquaporin4 was found to be a target in NMO which was a disease notably of the optic nerve and the spinal cord with less brain involvment…abit like mouse EAE.

Details worth keeping

You can do this in beasties as you know the target in many cases. It was more damage-associated with relapse and was more commonly seen in east Asian populations. It also did not respond to some MS-drugs in the same way as MS.

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