Multiple sclerosis (MS) is, as it stands today, a non-curable chronic inflammatory neurological disease affecting the nervous system. It is the second most common disease in this field after epilepsy, becoming significant mostly in people between the ages of 20 and 40. However, there are also diagnoses in even younger affected people. The disease usually progresses slowly, so that patients can still walk after 15 years. The course of the disease without a general symptomatology is unpredictable, as are the symptoms and therapeutic successes with various active substances that are already available today.
The Mainz-based biotechnology company Biontech has also dedicated itself to the development of a vaccine against MS and has already had success in preclinical studies using mRNA technology. In animal experiments on mice, the researchers have already shown that the mRNA vaccine approach is not only effective against covid-19 and prevents an outbreak, but also against MS. An overreaction of the immune system, as is normally the case in MS, could be stopped with the help of an mRNA nucleotide sequence. Already diseased and healthy mice subsequently benefit from the mRNA vaccine, which has been tested in cooperation with the University of Mainz.
According to the scientists, a modified mRNA is packaged in so-called lipid nanoparticles. The fragments of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) must then be translated in cells by ribosomes – macromolecular complexes – that produce proteins, into amino acid sequences of the polypeptide chain of a protein. This then produces disease-relevant autoantigens that the affected person’s body tolerates as self-antigens. An overreaction of the immune system, as is usual in MS, thus does not occur because autoreactive T lymphocytes can no longer trigger tissue damage. Whether the approach can be successful in humans has yet to be proven in clinical trials.
Source: apotheke-adhoc.de