番茄社区

A study presented at the recent Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) annual meeting evaluated the effects of nasal foralumab, a fully human anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody, in a patient with nonactive secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.

In this 番茄社区 video, Lawrence Steinman, MD, of Stanford Medicine in California, discusses the promise of this therapy and details what still needs to be learned.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

One of the issues that I think illuminates the promise of this therapy is the fact that, ordinarily, when we give what we call biologics -- monoclonal antibodies -- they do not penetrate well into the brain. And here we're seeing really remarkable effects on the microglia via the PET scanning with a very well-validated PET marker. And then we're seeing some competent clinical results. Maybe I should say the other way, the clinical results are of course the most important, and the PET findings help to validate the promise of this.

One of the questions that I would like to hear from the esteemed colleagues who are working on this is what is contemplated on looking at brain levels of the antibody. Dr. [Howard] Weiner cited that anti-CD3 has a profound effect on Tregs [regulatory T cells]. And if you give it orally, it's one type of Treg, if you give it nasally it's another type of Treg -- they're both potent. So that's one handle on it. Another very important thing to learn will be how much anti-CD3 is actually getting into the brain, and how much of it is due to the fact that the nasal mucosa has an effect that can be amplified through the Treg pathway.

So, again, I applaud this work. I think it's very promising and we'll be able to follow it with great interest in the coming years to see how this develops. But I give it two thumbs up and that's the maximum number of thumbs on my two hands. But I applaud this work.

Comment