In about 2016 ProfG asked MD to go to a conference in Lisbon to talk about how antibodies work in MS. He supplied about 80 slides for a 20minute talk. To be honest the conference was for antibody engineers who didn’t really care about MS and so maybe a reason why ProfG asked MD to the trip. Needless to say it is not an easy task and was easier to do ones own slides. During this process MD said ha…they all work the same way ,some better than others and the suggestion that there is overdosing with anti-CD20 antibodies arose. Now this wasn’t the first time that this had been siad but there was a underlying mechanistic reason that was not centred on T cells. So in a couple of weeks after the conference MD wrote 4 papers that explained this and presented them to the group. They then used the ocrelizumab as then unpublished phase II data to put meat on the idea-carcase and this was subsequently supported by real world evidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. This current study works how much dosh was saved by looking at extending the interval for dosing with ocrelizumab and also by looking at how much could have been saved if rituximab (which is not approved for use in MS) was used instead…It did and would have saved many millions of pounds…So can one claim our observations where the first that ultimately resulted in the impact of saving cash and probably benefitted people with MS.
Who cares? Well the UK government cares because they look for impact from research and reward Universities with cash if their research shows impact on Society. However, as a scientist it takes many years for impact to be seen and whilst MD1 & 2 provided the first mechanistic understanding of how cannabis could control symptoms in MS, which was subsequently shown over ten years later and a medicine was born, the University didn’t claim the impact, as the research was done eleswhere and it was too old to claim.
Will they claim impact for the observations about exteneded interval dosing…..I guess again we get who cares….the MDs have now been put out to grass and doesn’t matter to them about the Impact and they don’t need the back patting. ProfG has largely given up on this type of work in MS, ProfK could claim it but has more stakes and should put effort into other claimsthat have impact.
Universities spend alot of time coverting papers that fail to deliver tangible benefit to people with MS. We know what we did and didn’t do we played a part but other people have done the graft.
Boutiere C, Saunier R, Rico A, Perriguey M, Demortiere S, Hilezian F, Maarouf A, Roudot M, Pelletier J, Audoin B. Long-interval dosing of anti-CD20 therapy: Toward affordable treatment for multiple sclerosis. Rev Neurol (Paris). 2026 Jan 16:S0035-3787(26)00001-9.
Source: multiple-sclerosis-research.org