Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s own immune system attacks and damages the protective coating – made up of myelin – around nerve cells. Myelin is a biological membrane made of protein and fatty substances.
Due to the fact that multiple sclerosis and myelin are directly connected, research efforts to find the disease’s target antigen have so far focused solely on the myelin membrane’s components. That is, until new findings, recently made by the research group of Mireia Sospedra and Roland Martin from the University of Zurich’s Clinical Research Priority Program Multiple Sclerosis, have now suggested otherwise. They have revealed through their study that it is worth broadening the research perspective to gain a better understanding of the pathological processes.
Their study reports that T cells are activated in the intestines and migrate to the brain, causing an inflammatory cascade that may lead to multiple sclerosis. This means that the gut microbiome may play a more significant role in the development and progression of MS than previously believed. The research has been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
T cells are the immune cells responsible for pathological processes. They react to a protein called GDP-L-fucose synthase. This enzyme is formed in human cells and it is also formed in bacteria frequently found in the gastrointestinal flora of patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. The results of their study show that this gut microbiota could play a far greater role in the pathogenesis of the disease than previously assumed.
Mireia Sospedra said:
“We believe that the immune cells are activated in the intestine and then migrate to the brain, where they cause an inflammatory cascade when they come across the human variant of their target antigen.”
Sospedra plans to test the immunoactive components of GDP-L-fucose synthase using an approach that the researchers have been pursuing for several years already. She hopes that their findings can soon also be translated into therapy. “Our clinical approach specifically targets the pathological autoreactive immune cells,” Sospedra said. That is what sets their treatment method apart from ones currently used.
The treatments currently available do succeed in stopping the progression of the disease, but they also weaken the immune system, and can thus cause severe side effects. The clinical approach of the research group does not do this. It merely re-educates the patient’s immune system.
The process involves drawing blood from MS patients in a clinical trial and then attaching the immunoactive protein fragments onto the surface of red blood cells in a laboratory. Then, the blood is reintroduced into the bloodstream of patients, where the fragments help to “re-educate” their immune system and make it “tolerate” its own brain tissue.
