The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first ever drug that will be the treatment for multiple sclerosis. On Tuesday, the first FDA-approved drug, Ocrevus that will help patients with severe multiple sclerosis has offered new hope.
This new medicine for multiple sclerosis will help patients fight the disease that paralyzes its victim then decreases its control of cognitive skills. Genentech will sell the product under the name Ocrevus. The drug is called ocrelizumab and it has shown impressive results when it was tested. It has stopped the disease even with the patients with severe multiple sclerosis, reported The New York Times.
This new drug has opened new opportunities not only for the patients but also for the doctors and other researchers, said Dr. Fred D. Lublin, who was a crucial investigator for the clinical trial and is director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. After opening that door, there will be more other doors that will open and everything will just go uphill after this, he added. it has encouraged many doctors and scientists to continue finding better medicine and more appropriate drugs that will help patients with MS.
It was the Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG that announced that the Food and Drug Administration has approved its new drug. It was the Hauser's research that started all of it. Dr. Stephen Hauser encountered a patient 40 years ago and was devastated when he cannot do anything to help the woman. He vowed to research and make a drug that will help multiple sclerosis patients. "It's personally incredibly rewarding," Dr. Hauser said. "This is a big deal for people with MS."
Multiple sclerosis affects about 400,000 Americans and about two million people worldwide, according to STAT. Ocrevus or ocrelizumab has a special way to combat MS. It stops specific immune system cells named B cells, which Hauser's lab discovered to have been played a critical role in the disease. It also blocks T cells that are the main reason for the spreading of MS.
