Irish researchers have raised new hopes for a new class of drugs that are being tested for treatment of multiple sclerosis.
Professor Kingston Mills and colleagues at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have identified a new therapeutic potential of drugs that target the immune molecule IL-17.
This approach may also benefit people with other autoimmune diseases including psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Details appeared yesterday (4 February) in Immunity. They carried out tests on mice with a condition similar to multiple sclerosis called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis and found that IL-17 is involved in damage to the myelin sheath around nerve cells.
They say that it plays a critical ‘priming’ role in kick-starting the disease-causing immune response that mediates damage. Early trials of drugs blocking IL-17 “are showing promise” against relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, they add. These drugs are already used for psoriasis.
Professor Mills said: "The new research shows that, instead of playing a direct part in central nervous system pathology, a key role of IL-17 is to mobilise and activate an army of disease-causing immune cells in the lymph nodes that then migrate to the central nervous system to cause the nerve damage."
Co-author Dr Aoife McGinley added: "Crucially, our findings suggest that drugs that block IL-17 may not need to get across the blood-brain-barrier to be effective in treating multiple sclerosis.
"So, as well as shedding new light on the importance of IL-17 as a drugs target in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis , our research highlights the huge potential of drugs that block IL-17 in the treatment of other autoimmune diseases."
McGinley, A. M. et al. Interleukin-17A Serves a Priming Role in Autoimmunity by Recruiting IL-1?-Producing Myeloid Cells that Promote Pathogenic T Cells. Immunity 4 February 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2020.01.002
https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(20)30029-7
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