Robert Lisak, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has received a grant to conduct further study of an approved treatment for relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis.

The $272,856 two-year grant was awarded by Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd., based in Israel. The study involves the role of growth factors in neuroprotection and remyelination in animals with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a model used in multiple sclerosis research. Dr. Lisak and his team will examine the effects of glatiramer acetate on these growth factors.

The study's co-investigators are Fei Song, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Neurology; Joyce Benjamins, Ph.D., professor and associate chair of Neurology; and Jeffrey Loeb, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Neurology and Molecular Medicine and Genetics and associate director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

Patients with MS undergo an attack against of the protective myelin sheaths coating the nerves, brain and spinal cord, as well as either directly or indirectly the neurons and their axons in nerve cells. Evidence from previous animal models indicates that glatiramer acetate protects nerve cells and axons while limiting demyelination. How this occurs is not yet fully understood.

"We will further study animal models as well as tissue culture experiments, and then look for evidence of involvement of the same growth factors operating in humans," Dr. Lisak said.

The study will explore whether the treatment of animals with glatiramer acetate reduces the disease and offers neuroprotection in inbred animals that cannot respond to specific individual neurotrophic growth factors in the nervous system (neurotrophins). Dr. Lisak and the team want to determine whether this block in neurotrophin signaling changes the effect of the glatiramer acetate and whether the gene and protein regulation of other growth factors (particularly neuregulin) differs from those of treated animals that respond normally to neurotrophins.

"In patients with MS, it would suggest other possible therapeutic approaches to treatment looking at other ways of enhancing the pathways of these growth factors, including the neurotrophins and neuregulin," Dr. Lisak said.