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DNA Vaccine May Treat Multiple Sclerosis

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-for-what-ails-you dept.

GSASoftware writes "Multiple sclerosis is a serious, as-yet incurable neurological disease which causes blindness, paralysis and other serious symptoms. In a new development, a neuroimmunology researcher in Montreal has developed a therapeutic DNA vaccine. The cause of the disease is not fully understood, but it appears to be auto-immune. If a DNA vaccine can be an effective therapy for this auto-immune disease, is it possible that DNA vaccines could treat other auto-immune diseases like Crohn's, eczema, and others?"

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Always a possibility by dberstein · · Score: 5, Informative

    I suffer from MS; the last I heard of a vaccine was last year: they shut the study after a couple of patients died.

    This is are very interesting and promising news for me. Perhaps in a couple of years I won't need my daily anti-fatigue pills, weekly interferon beta 1a shots, and those occasional hospital corticoid shock treatments. Probably I'll never recover for the disabilities I've already got, but at least I won't develop any further because of MS!

  2. "DNA vaccine" by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_vaccination

    DNA is the active ingredient of the vaccine, if they mean what people usually mean by "DNA vaccine".

    To vaccinate against a pathogen, you'd take some gene from it that codes for a surface protein, inject that DNA into muscle cells, let them express it and produce the protein, and the immune system would learn to react.

    Which leaves plenty of confusion, since the goal of MS therapy would be to turn off the immune response to myelin, not to create an immune response.

    This isn't about gene therapy.