Fred Lublin, MD: Beginning to Treat Progressive Multiple Sclerosis

“The approval of ocrelizumab for primary progressive MS was a centennial event.”

In 2017, the FDA approved ocrelizumab (Ocrevus) for the treatment of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), marking a turning point in the disease’s history, and launching treatments into a new era.

Fred Lublin, MD, the director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Medical Center sat with NeurologyLive and spoke about this new era, and how it has become the biggest advancement in the space in the last decade. He noted that while the effect of the therapy in trials was modest, there is still much to learn about using it moving forward.

The pipeline for progressive disease also excites Lublin, especially with the recent clinical developments of siponimod, an oral selective sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor modulator that has also shown modest effects on secondary progressive disease.

Additionally, Lublin spoke about the pipeline for relapsing MS, which, while continuing down similar paths as what’s currently available, has therapies that seem to work more on the innate immune system than the adaptive immune system.