Loss of myelin lies behind serious neurological conditions, including multiple sclerosis, leukodystrophies, and periventricular leukomalacia in premature infants, all described as common rather than rare. In MS, the immune system attacks the nervous system, and roughly 2.8 million people worldwide live with the disease. Current best treatments can only slow that immune assault; they cannot repair damage that has already occurred, making the neurodegeneration a one-way process once nerve fibers are harmed.
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The hosts frame the therapeutic gap in MS treatment as the opening the discussed paper aims to address.
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2:14principles,
2:28multiple sclerosis, lucodistrophies and perventricular luccom malaysia in premature infants. These are all not actually obscure conditions that are buried in the back of some medical textbook. Okay, this isn't like house an episode where it's like some weird thing. This is actually very very prevalent in our society. Roughly 2.8 million people worldwide live with MS alone. And for most of them, um, the disease is a slow, relentless war of attrition against just neuroderadation and brain damage. It's their own immune
3:10system attacking the nervous system. And today's best treatments, they can only really slow that immune assault. They can't really fix the problem. They can only slow it down, but if the damage has already been done, that's it. Right? And that's the gap that this particular paper steps into. And it's a new fundamental type of research that could pave the way for rebuilding that damage that's caused by these conditions. And it does so it's coming from a very unlikely source, namely the genomes of animals that are populating the Tibetan plateau at extremely high altitudes. It turns out these animals have certain adaptations from evolution that we could
3:52borrow to maybe fix these problems in neuroderadation. This would be huge. I mean, as you mentioned, this is something that impacts uh a a huge population of people. >> Yeah. >> Globally and it's extremely pernitious because there's no rewind. >> Yes. Exactly. And there's ways to slow it down to maybe pause it, but that's the best you can do right now. Mhm. >> The holy grail is to rewind neuro degradation, right? Nerve damage is something that is notoriously >> a one-way street, especially if you get all the way to where the nerves themselves are damaged.
Evolutionary BiologyNeurobiologyPharmacologyRegenerative Medicine