Gladstone: $5.8M for brain/immune/vascular in Neuro diseases

[ThisIsMA]

This research seems very CCSVI related. Here's a few excerpts from the press release and a link to it. Bold type added by me:

https://gladstone.org/about-us/news/gla ... al-disease

Gladstone Investigator Receives $5.8M Grant for Pioneering Research into Neurological Disease

Gladstone Senior Investigator Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, was awarded a prestigious multi-year, multi-million dollar grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Akassoglou’s research focuses on the intersection of the brain, immune, and vascular systems. Her lab pioneered the study of blood proteins in neurological diseases, showing that when these proteins leak into the brain, they damage brain cells and activate the brain’s immune system, triggering inflammation and neuron death. Akassoglou identified one blood protein in particular, fibrinogen, that is strongly implicated in multiple sclerosis. She thinks fibrinogen could be a therapeutic target for multiple sclerosis and many other neurological diseases.

The NINDS Research Program Award (R35) provides longer-term support and increased flexibility to exceptional scientists who have a consistent record of high-impact contributions to neuroscience. It promotes ambitious, creative research and offers investigators greater freedom to embark upon research that breaks new ground.

This funding source is also worth noticing, since they seem open to funding innovative research...

[Cece]

She has a large and relevant body of work listed in google scholar:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?star ... s_sdt=0,24

Here's a good one: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2230

A prominent consequence of BBB leakage in MS is the local extravasation of plasma fibrinogen and other circulating hemostatic factors that results in the local deposition of perivascular fibrin matrices. Fibrin deposition in active demyelinating MS lesions correlates with increased inflammatory activity and microglial activation. In early pre-demyelinating MS lesions, fibrin deposition and microglial activation are the first histopathological alterations, which precede the infiltration of T lymphocytes and demyelination.

Extravasation is a word I learned here, meaning that components of blood are leaking out of the blood vessels and onto the brain tissue.
Precede is important, as it means that the fibrin is causing harm even before T-cells get there and the demyelination gets underway. If the fibrin is first, is it causal?
Extremely relevant research, ThisIsMA, good find

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6698.short
Fibrin depletion delays onset of demyelination, at least in mice in 2004.
There are people with congenital fibrinogen deficiency according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrinogen), is there a database where that can be cross-analyzed with MS to see if they have reduced incidence of MS?
According to this, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7796831, you can lower your fibrinogen mostly by quitting smoking, but also by losing weight, increasing activity, and reducing stress. With smoking being one of the few things that worsen MS the most, is it because the smoking increases fibrinogen?