This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Researchers identify chemical compound that decreases effects of multiple sclerosis

Given such debilitating effects of MS, an aggressive search is on among scientists to find a cure for MS. Currently available therapies are only partially effective, however, in preventing the onset of permanent disability in MS patients. What would be immensely helpful is a drug that could minimize the degeneration of axons, thus reducing the rate and degree of MS progression. Better still would be if this drug could stimulate "remyelination," the re-sheathing of the axons, restoring fast and uninterrupted flow of nerve impulses.

Now a team of researchers, led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, reports in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that it has identified just such a drug in the lab: indazole chloride (Ind-Cl)...... Read More - http://www.ms-uk.org/emergingtherapies

Full paper available off this page.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/ ... 1.abstract

Possibly at:http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/ ... &view=FitH

Indazole chloride's chemical structure.

http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compoun ... ection=Top

well I guess the good news is that there is great hope for your multiple sclerosis if you are a mouse. Am I the only one who is sick of all the wasted money, research time, false starts, empty promises that have come from this failed mouse model. Is there a single treatment, applicable to humans, that started with the mouse model? I see the word mouse in an article and I do this....

Do you have a better suggestion?

yeah, feed the mice to the cats, and do medical research on humans. Now I know what people will say in response. But we have to test the mice first to see if is safe for us. That's a red herring. They aren't testing these compounds for safety. They test for effectiveness at treating a model of MS. That's like saying I don't know where this road goes, so to tell, let me take this other road over here. They do it because it's cheap and gives grad students something to do. It makes them feel like they are really accomplishing something. Funny how the drug companies don't seem to be as interested in working with mice.

The map is not the territory and the menu is not the meal.

Waiting for Godot gets tiring.

Now if only Zamboni had done ten years of research on mice (or even rats), this discussion might be different