multiple sclerosis

Stem cells for MS & other weekly reads: CRISPR, COVID & a bat cave, Huntington’s

Symptoms_of_multiple_sclerosis.svg_

About 1 million people are living with multiple sclerosis in the U.S. alone with millions of other cases around the world so a huge effort has gone into trying to find new approaches to the disease including stem cells for MS. We’ll start our weekly recommended reads by talking about a new paper on MS …

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Stronger link between EBV and MS brings concrete clinical hope

Axial MRI scans of a person with multiple sclerosis

I’ve ended up learning a lot about multiple sclerosis (MS) while writing The Niche for the past twelve plus years, but I’ve never seen anything like the new research linking EBV and MS. EBV stands for Epstein Barr Virus. The reason I’ve learned much more about MS while writing here is that there has been …

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Patient Q&A#2: Are autoimmune or stem cell transplant patients at higher risk from COVID-19?

COVID-19

I’m continuing my stem cell patient Q&A series and today’s Q&A#2 post is focused on whether autoimmune patients generally or specifically those who have received chemo and hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCT) are at higher risk from COVID-19? Multiple patients have asked me this. It’s a great question and obviously urgent right now during the …

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Northwestern abruptly ending Burt HSCT autoimmune trials

Selma-Blair-HSCT

“HSCT Chicago Clinic Closing!” is the startling header in all caps on a patient-run Facebook page about a stem cell therapy clinical trial program at Northwestern University. What’s going on? Unfortunately, the promising field of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases seems to have suffered an unexpected setback …

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Upbeat Burt team pub on stem cells for MS comes with uneasy back story

Stem cells for MS, Types-of-Multiple-Sclerosis

Stem cells for MS? How promising is that? A new paper gives stronger reason for hope, but unfortunately this story is more complex than it seems on first glance. New Paper The idea of using a stem cell-related approach to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) has been around for a long time holding major promise, but …

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Patient’s Powerful Story on Multiple sclerosis and Getting Experimental Stem Cells

Caroline-Wyatt

Multiple sclerosis (MS) can be an extremely debilitating disease that ultimately is fatal in some patients and reduces life expectancy and quality overall substantially. An MS patient named Caroline Wyatt, who works at the BBC, had the courage to open up in full detail on the BBC about having MS, her experience getting an experimental …

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Taming an unruly immune system: a risky stem cell transplant that changed fate of some Canadian MS patients

Dr.-Harry-Atkins

By Hamideh Emrani (@HamidehEmrani) This year, Dr. Harold Atkins was honored with the Till & McCulloch Award. He and Dr. Mark Freedman led a clinical trial that used stem cells to reset the immune system as a treatment strategy for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and a few other neurodegenerative diseases, such as stiff person syndrome. You can …

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Burt Northwestern Stem Cell MS Trial Part 1: Big Promise & Tough Questions

Curing-Multiple-Sclerosis-Stem-Cells

Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University has been doing cutting edge research on the use of stem cells for autoimmune disorders for more than a decade. The core idea behind the work that Burt and other research teams are doing is that stem cells may have revolutionary potential to somehow counteract the autoimmunity that causes …

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Landmark New Stem Cell Trial for Multiple Sclerosis Raises Hopes

Mark-S.-Freedman

A new stem cell clinical trial for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in Canada is raising hopes amongst patients and researchers. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the trial will be led by Dr. Mark S. Freedman (pictured, photo from Ottawa Hospital), director of the multiple sclerosis research unit at The Ottawa Hospital and “The Canadian trials which …

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Interview with Bob Lanza on new ACT MSCs for MS paper

I did a brief email Q&A interview with Dr. Bob Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) on their new hES MSCs pre-clinical data for Multiple Sclerosis. I discussed the paper itself in a concise review yesterday here. Thanks to Dr. Lanza for doing the interview. 1. Were you surprised at the fact that the therapeutic …

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