Module 11 of 12
How treatments work
11 lessons · 11 available · 39 min
0 of 11 lessons read
- 1.What a treatment has to do
A treatment for MS can aim at very different things, and evidence for one aim says little about another. This lesson explains the aims, how each is measured, how to read the size of an effect, and why every medicine is also a test of an idea about the disease.
- 2.Biologics and small molecules
Why some medicines are tablets and others infusions, and what that decides about where they act.
- 3.From an idea to an approved medicine
Animal models, the three phases of trials, comparators, regulators and the signals that can mislead.
- 4.The first medicines: interferon beta and glatiramer acetate
Interferon beta and glatiramer acetate, and the partly right ideas behind them.
- 5.Keeping immune cells out of the brain
Natalizumab and the S1P modulators, and what their failures in progressive MS revealed.
- 6.Removing B cells
How anti-CD20 antibodies changed the understanding of MS.
- 7.Calming and slowing immune cells
Teriflunomide, the fumarates, older immunosuppressants, and the ideas that made MS worse.
- 8.Resetting the immune system
Cladribine, alemtuzumab, stem-cell transplants and CAR-T cells.
- 9.Reaching inflammation inside the brain
BTK inhibitors and the first large test of treating smouldering inflammation.
- 10.Treating relapses and symptoms
Steroids, plasma exchange, fampridine and symptom care, and what they show about damaged nerves.
- 11.What the medicines have taught us
Six lessons from thirty years of MS medicines.
Assembled by software from public sources and not checked by people. Each record links to its source. Report an error