Belgian Research Holds Hope For Multiple Sclerosis Patients Technique Uses Deactivated Immune Cells To Fool System

A very small Belgian trial suggests that a vaccine for multiple sclerosis - made from a patient’s own immune cells - may help slow the progression of this crippling nerve disease.

Other experts were intrigued with the concept but skeptical that the vaccine would ever be a widely available cure.

The vaccine dramatically reduced the number of bouts of multiple sclerosis in eight volunteers traced for two years, said Dr. Jef Raus, one of the investigators at the Multiple Sclerosis Research and Immunology Unit in Diepenbeek, Belgium.

But he added he is “very cautious,” because so few patients have been tested.

The difficulty about assessing new treatments for the disease is that it comes in bouts. It is difficult to know whether a treatment is truly working or whether the patient would have had a few symptom-free years anyway.

The findings are published in the current issue of The Lancet, a medical journal.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which the patient’s immune cells attack the nerves. No one knows why the body seems to turn against itself, nor is there a cure.

Immune cells target myelin, the cushioning sheath around nerve fibers. As myelin deteriorates, nerve signals go awry. Victims have trouble controlling their movements. Many patients have trouble walking. They may also suffer from blurred vision, slurred speech and tremors.

All too often, promising results from small experiments like this one do not pan out in large-scale trials.

The vaccine was made by removing a sample of the patients’ own immune cells, and then weakening the cells so they no longer work. In essence they are merely shells masquerading as defense cells.

The investigators grew these lame cells and injected a massive dose back into the patients.

Raus believes the presence of these non-working cells shuts down the body’s own immune cell production. In essence, the vaccine fools the body into stopping its assault on the nervous system.

The concept is being tested in other diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

Dr. Michael Lockshin, an multiple sclerosis expert with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said “this is one of a number of important immunological manipulations that both inform us about the mechanism of the disease and will possibly lead to something more direct.”

“I suspect no widely available cure will result from T-cell vaccination itself, but there may be T-cell products that can be used in one way or another,” he added.

Researchers gave the eight volunteers three doses of the vaccine.

Two vaccinated patients did not suffer any bouts of the disease for at least two years after vaccination. Three patients, who had had 16 bouts of the disease in the two years prior to vaccination, suffered only three bouts during the course of the trial, said Raus.

The other three continued to have bouts of the disease. But researchers gave them another personalized vaccine made from different immune cells. After the second vaccine, the progression of the disease slowed, said Raus.

In comparison, eight unvaccinated patients with multiple sclerosis showed no improvement in their disease.