The effects of multiple sclerosis could be reversed within 15 years using stem-cell treatment, the head of a groundbreaking Scottish research centre said yesterday.
Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, director of the Edinburgh-based centre which was launched last year thanks to a donation from author JK Rowling, said his team of scientists aim to use stem cells to repair nerve damage caused by MS.
In his first interview since taking up the post, the professor of medical neurology said the treatment could halt the decline of patients who suffer from MS - which affects one in 500 Scots, one of the highest rates in the world.
At present, medicines available for MS patients attempt only to reduce the inflammation which causes the disease. However, doctors can offer sufferers nothing to reverse the growing damage left behind and so most people become increasingly debilitated.
Professor ffrench-Constant said: "My vision for a patient coming into a clinic in 10 or maybe 15 years' time is they will be given a mixture of drugs to prevent the inflammation and to promote repair. That way, MS would no longer be a chronic, disabling disease."
He envisages a treatment which is either injected into the bloodstream or taken as a pill, and then dispersed through the nervous system, prompting the growth of new myelin, the sheath which protects nerve fibres.
MS, which usually strikes young adults, is one of a group of diseases in which the immune system attacks body tissue as though it were an infection. In MS, myelin is stripped away completely and the fibres themselves are at risk of damage. This disrupts the messages the fibres should be carrying and patients can experience a wide range of different symptoms.
Professor ffrench-Constant, who moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge University to direct the new centre, wants to find a way to make the body rebuild damaged myelin using stem cells, which have the ability to turn into different types of tissue and are sometimes described as a repair kit. The process would not involve the controversial cells from embryos.
The professor said there were a surprisingly high number of stem cells in the brain and he wants to harness their potential to reduce the burden of MS.
He said: "There are two ways you might do it. One is to transplant into the nervous system of patients stem cells which have the ability to make new myelin and repair but much more attractive is to actually recruit the stem cells that are already there.
"The question is why aren't they contributing successfully anyway. Either the stem cell has lost the ability to repair, but we think that is unlikely, or more likely the environment of the damaged brain and spinal cord is in some way inhibitory to that stem cell. We have to get that stem cell to reactivate and repair."
Trying to understand how the brain tissue stem cells behave in MS patients is among the hurdles faced by his research team, particularly as it is difficult to see what is happening in the brain using scanning techniques.
The centre is set to track the progression of the disease in newly diagnosed people using an advanced scanner at Edinburgh's Western General.
Professor ffrench-Constant stressed the researchers would have to select recruits carefully, but said he under- stood patients' impatience for advances in treatment.
"We need to address the problem of MS patients who are gradually getting worse, are very worried about their long-term ability to stay mobile and independent and for whom there is currently no drug therapy available."
The research centre is part of Edinburgh University's Centre for Regenerative Medicine, which is headed by Professor Ian Wilmut, who led the team behind Dolly the sheep. It was launched using £2m from the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland after the charity received a gift from Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
Mark Hazelwood, director of the MS Society Scotland, said: "It is important now to invest in the research that will bring on the next generation of treatments. There is no better place or environment to do that than at Edinburgh University. Scotland has an international reputation for stem-cell science."
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