Developing a new treatment for MS: Controlling CD40 in EAE

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society reports that 1.2 million people worldwide and more than 400,000 people in the U.S. have clinically diagnosed MS. Currently there are 10 FDA approved drugs for MS but none ofthe current drugs have impacted the course of MS to prevent relapses or progression of disease. An efficient means to control the autoimmune inflammation in MS is crucial to disease management. A major inflammatory interaction that has been identified in MS is the CD40/CD154 axis. In fact controlling this pro-inflammatory dyad has been in previous years, a high priority. The problem for therapeutic development has been the method to control CD40/CD154 interaction, specifically monoclonal antibodies. CD40 antibodies are agonistic, thus promoting inflammation and CD154 antibodies induced thrombosis. We created a novel means to control the interaction using a targeted peptide that binds directly to the CD40 protein at the CD154 interaction site. Using an a