DALLAS – The National Multiple Sclerosis society has awarded the 2018 Barancik Prize for Innovation in Multiple Sclerosis Research to Katerina Akassoglou, PhD.
Dr. Akassoglou laid out the course of research into the role of fibrinogen in multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative disorders during her talk at the meeting held by the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis.
Dr. Akassoglou and her collaborators questioned the received wisdom about what happens when the brain’s vasculature is disrupted, she said in a video interview. “Fibrinogen was studied for several decades as only a marker of blood-brain barrier disruption. We asked the question, ‘Is it possible that it’s not only a marker, but it also plays a role in disease pathogenesis?’ ”
Over the years, said Dr. Akassoglou, she and her collaborators have developed tools “to dissect this chicken-and-egg question.” A key answer came when the researchers found that when fibrinogen leaks through the vasculature into brain tissue, it can promote inflammatory processes. “At the same time, it induced pathogenic responses in brain immune cells, causing them to be toxic to neuronal cells.”
“Using genetic models of depleting fibrinogen, or blocking its interactions with immune receptors, provided compelling data that this could be an important target for neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation,” said Dr. Akassoglou, professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.
The problem came in trying to find a way to block or deplete fibrinogen inside central nervous system tissue without inactivating it throughout the circulation, since it’s essential for hemostasis.
A promising answer to this problem lies in an investigational monoclonal antibody that binds selectively to sites on fibrinogen that are activated in the brain but are not involved with fibrinogen’s usual role in the clotting cascade in the peripheral circulation, she said.