Experimental Approaches to Specific Immunotherapy in Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease where a small number of activated, white matter-reactive T-cells specifically migrate into the myelinated central nervous system leading to inflammation, and eventually demyelination (McFarlin and McFarland 1982; Waksman and Reynolds 1984). It appears that one necessary component to MS and in fact other autoimmune diseases is lack of immune regulation (Hafler and Weiner 1987; Hafler et al. 1989). A second component in MS may be the capability of a patient’s T-cells to recognize white matter structures such as myelin basic protein and proteolipid protein, which have been postulated to be the immune targets in the disease’s initial induction (Ota et al. 1990). Thus there must be very careful regulation of the ability of autoreactive T-cells to become activated with their potential to mediate inflammatory, destructive processes in the nervous system.