I am up to $2955!!!!!! We are making a difference!!!!!!!! Research News: Fast ForwardSM Supports British Professor’s War on MS While doing a BBC interview during the first Gulf War, Prof. David Wraith realized he’d probably be using combat analogies to describe his work forever. Wraith is Chief Scientific Officer of Apitope, a British biopharmaceutical company, in addition to being Professor of Experimental Pathology at the University of Bristol. Two days before Christmas, Apitope became the first company to receive funding from Fast ForwardSM, the National MS Society subsidiary designed to speed the development of MS treatments by funding private ventures. The $1 million investment — not grant but investment, because if Apitope succeeds the Society earns a return — will help fund a clinical trial of the company’s experimental MS vaccine. The hope is that the vaccine may stop MS attacks by redirecting the body’s immune response. “In the long term we would hope to be able to identify people at risk for MS and treat them before the disease even starts,” Wraith said. “Autoimmune diseases such as MS are caused by immune cells whose normal job is to fight infections. You can think of these diseases in terms of ‘friendly fire’ where the troops fighting the enemy now mistakenly attack their own side,” he said. The question is how to improve the good guys’ aim. Wraith’s theory is that desensitization — the technique that has helped allergy sufferers for almost a century — can be adapted to MS. Apitope developed a series of peptide fragments (substances that are similar to proteins but smaller) that stimulate T cells, a type of white blood cell that fights infections. “In effect, what we’re developing is a means of extending the allergy analogy: desensitizing people by giving the peptides in low doses in a very safe manner,” Wraith said. “When this is done, the cells that recognize them turn into suppressor cells — cells that dampen down the immune response.” The first, small clinical trial of these peptides was designed to gauge safety, not efficacy. (There were no significant adverse reactions.) Nevertheless, one participant’s optic neuritis improved so dramatically that Wraith feels guardedly optimistic that Apitope’s treatment will work. “It was a very encouraging coincidence,” he said. This isn’t the first time that Wraith and the National MS Society have helped one another. Earlier in his career, a Society fellowship allowed Wraith to extend a one-year fellowship to three years to work with Professors Hugh McDevitt and Lawrence Steinman at Stanford. “Two or three fairly major pieces of work came out of that period. It was incredibly productive. One of them was an observation that by altering one of these peptides in a fairly subtle way, you could create a peptide which now prevented disease rather than causing disease,” Wraith said. He published this finding in the journal Cell in 1989. Like everyone involved with MS research, Wraith wishes progress came faster: “We set up Apitope in 2002 because we got to a point where we felt we had something that should be taken into the clinic. It’s taken this long to get the first clinical trial done, but that’s how long these things take, I’m afraid.” That, of course, is why Fast Forward exists: to provide capital to push the process along. Nor is Fast Forward alone: it’s part of a syndicate of investors, showing that lots of smart people have high hopes for Apitope. “Our investment process was also validated when Merck Serono decided to sign a licensing and development deal for the MS therapy,” said Timothy Coetzee, PhD, Fast Forward’s executive director. “Their commitment to Apitope will help ensure the drug is developed.” Fast Forward is in talks with several more candidates for funding, and we’ll report on future developments.
