MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: SPMS Transition, NVG-291, PIPE-307, Foralumab

MS Doctors, Nurses in UK Struggle With Marking Transition to SPMS

The issue highlighted in this story isn’t just a problem in the U.K.; it’s a universal MS problem. People with MS often ask how they will know when their illness has transitioned from relapsing to progressive. I respond to that question by asking if it really matters what we call it. I wonder if we’d be better off doing away with MS subgroups.

Among healthcare providers in the U.K., considerable variation exists in marking the transition from relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS), a study based on interview responses reports.

Neurologists and nurses with MS specialties also expressed a reluctance to label patients as having progressed to SPMS due to a lack of available treatments for this MS form, its researchers wrote.

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NervGen Cleared to Enroll 2nd MAD Group in NVG-291 Trial

This announcement has generated quite a bit of buzz on the MS News Today Facebook page. The reason? NVG-291 is a small protein designed to boost myelin regeneration — the holy grail of MS treatments. NervGen hopes to launch this trial by the end of the year.

NervGen Pharma has been cleared to enroll a second group of healthy volunteers into the multiple ascending dose (MAD) portion of its Phase 1 clinical trial of NVG-291, a therapeutic candidate for multiple sclerosis.

The trial’s Safety Review Committee approved the second group after seeing promising safety data from the first MAD group.

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PIPE-307, Aiming to Restore Myelin, Found Safe in Phase 1 Trial

Here’s another possible myelin restoration treatment that’s being studied. This was only a safety study, however, with healthy people as its subjects. Pipeline Therapeutics hopes to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for clinical testing with people with MS soon. So applause is due, but no wild cheering yet.

PIPE-307, an investigational myelin-restoring medication being developed by Pipeline Therapeutics for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, appears to be safe and well-tolerated in healthy adults.

The results are from a Phase 1 clinical trial (NCT04725175) that evaluated the safety and tolerability of PIPE-307 in 70 healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 55, at a center in Australia. It also looked at the medication’s pharmacokinetics, or how the medication moves through the body, which was found to be consistent with what was seen in preclinical models.

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Foralumab as Nasal Spray Safely, Effectively Treats 1st SPMS Patient

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use a spray rather than an injection or infusion to treat our MS? Foralumab holds that promise. So far, research has shown that the investigational therapy was well-tolerated and improved the patient’s walking ability, finger dexterity, and cognitive function. But let’s be careful here — these encouraging results are based on just six months of treatment for one person. A second person was enrolled in this trial in January. There’s still a long way to go.

Six months of treatment with foralumab, an experimental nasal spray, safely and effectively improved motor and cognitive function while easing immune activation and inflammatory responses in a person with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS), Tiziana Life Sciences, the therapy’s developer, announced.

The patient — the first with MS to receive the immune-modulating antibody — was treated at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston under a single-patient expanded access program approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April.

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