Multiple Sclerosis Treatment: ‘Rube Goldberg’ Immune System Discovered as Potential Cure

New research led by researcher Kelly Monaghan from the Western Virginia University School of Medicine recently suggested that part of the so-called "Rube Goldberg" immune system exhibits promise as a potential target for multiple sclerosis treatments.

A EurekAlert! report describes a human immune system as "a lot like the Mouse Trap board game," a "Rube Goldberg" system of interacting parts.

Only, rather than a falling ball that causes a small diver to leap into a tub, which is springing a trap of some plastic mice, proteins stimulate other proteins to trigger immune cells and direct them toward germs.

However, if such proteins mistakenly direct immune cells toward healthy tissue, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, which attacks neurons, can occur.

STAT5 Protein

According to Monaghan, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cell Biology, anytime there are central nervous system issues, one has to go through steps to have cells get into the brain or spinal cord.

She added, obtaining better insight into those immune system mechanisms linked to MS can help to inform novel treatments. Her findings were published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Her research, financially backed by the National Institutes of Health, focused on STAT5, one of the many proteins circulated in the body, that can metaphorically turn on or off genes.

Monaghan described STAT5 as a "transcription factor." She elaborated, it belongs to the STAT protein family, with many different roles in cell proliferation and inflammation.

Essentially, STAT5 proteins need to form dimers to control gene expression. The two dimers' interaction leads to the formation of tetramers, which control an independent set of target genes.

Immune Cells Infiltrating into the Meninges

Monaghan and her colleagues wanted to find out if STAT5 tetramers played a role in signaling white blood cells to interact and move across the meninges. The study investigators wanted to learn more about it if they indeed played such a role.

As the WVUToday report specified, Monaghan explained that the meninges, "if you don't know," are a three-membrane series surrounding the central nervous system.

These membranes, she elaborated, function as a sort of checkpoint, "if you will," to regulate the cells' mitigation into the actual spinal cord or brain. Meanwhile, the immune cells' infiltration into the meninges, is a hallmark of MS.

Specifically, Monaghan wanted to examine the molecular chain of occurrences that might cause STAT5 tetramers to direct another protein, also known as CCL17-to tell T cells, a white blood cell type, to attack the central nervous system; by means of "friendly fire."

Multiple Sclerosis

Describing their findings, Monaghan said MS is a very complicated condition. They discovered that the complex immune interactions between cells are certainly what's contributing to the difficulty in understanding this illness.

Insights such as those gleaned from this new research can point to future therapies for MS, a condition that over 2.3 million people globally are suffering from, as a National Multiple Sclerosis Society reports specified.

According to Monaghan's mentor and an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cell Biology, Edwin Wan, patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis suffer for a lifetime, and regrettably, their clinical symptoms are getting worse when the disease progresses. Existing drugs for MS treatments are quite effective since lowering the rate of relapse, although they cannot stop the progression of the disease.

More so, the bottleneck of developing more effective medications is that there's no complete picture about how MS is initiated, not to mention how it progresses. Monaghan said their study's findings help fill in that picture, bringing hypothetical MS therapies closer to reality.

Related information about the immune system and multiple sclerosis is shown on DrBarrySinger's YouTube video below:

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