May 30th is celebrated all over the world Multiple Sclerosis Daya neurological brain disease that affects one person worldwide (especially between the ages of 20 and 30) every 5 minutes, every day. In Italy alone, more than 130 thousand people suffer from it. The cause is still unknown. We know that environment and genetics contribute to causing it and that it is not hereditary or transmissible. And instead an autoimmune diseasei.e. characterized by the anomalous presence of a population of cells of the immune system – lymphocytes – which, for a cause still unknown, do not defend us as they should but attack us, mistaking our nerve cells as cells to be eliminated because they are perceived as foreign.
Over the last 30 years they have been developed and made available numerous therapies that effectively target (especially if taken early) abnormal lymphocytes above, but these therapies are not conclusive since the disease often tends to progress determining chronic damage to nervous tissue that may become irreversible, causing significant motor and psychological disabilities. And it is precisely on the correct interpretation of the mechanisms of this progression, to hit them and stop them, that the research is focusing. An interpretation that has already led from a theoretical assumption to encouraging experimental evidence: for this disease too, advanced therapies, the bulwark of the medicine of the future, can represent a concrete answer.
Therapies that include stem cell transplants – the main topic of the meeting organized on the occasion of the world day by the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association – which remain a concrete opportunity to be pursued, as well as antibody-based biological drugs, but also CAR-Ts and tissue engineering with 3D bioprinting. A powerful medicine, even if still experimental, promising because it is “natural”, that is aimed at strengthening the tools that Nature has developed to defend us during our evolution (for example antibodies). Tools which, however, when you are ill are less efficient, and therefore need to be stimulated and strengthened.
An advanced medicine which however must be used with “precision” because wanting to imitate Nature, he can also involuntarily modify it and, precisely for this reason, there are still many obstacles to overcome in the scientific and regulatory fields before it becomes accessible to everyone. So there is a need for a common and conscious effort – from government to industry, from academia to civil society, from patient associations to the media – that it is supported by the entire ecosystem, both social and economic, the true driving force of a knowledge society.
* Scientific Director, Irccs San Raffaele Hospital
