Fred Lublin, MD: The Need for Biomarkers in Multiple Sclerosis

“We’re trying to get an idea if it will give us prognostic information, or maybe even therapeutic effect information.”

Currently, the best available biomarker for the identification of multiple sclerosis (MS) is magnetic resonance imaging, commonly known as MRI. It’s been utilized very well to the clinician’s advantage in the last decade or so, informing them of lesion and disease activity to a highly sensitive degree. Although, MRI can only get the field so far.

Fred Lublin, MD, the Saunders Family Professor of Neurology and the director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Medical Center, sat with NeurologyLive to discuss the need for biomarkers in MS.

Lublin, an internationally renowned expert in the field, stressed that while indicators in the cerebral spinal fluid have shown promise, the need to conduct a spinal tap has limited the usefulness of these biomarkers. This has made neurofilament light (Nfl), a biomarker that has emerged in recent years, a viable candidate, though the information it is providing, he noted, still needs to be fully realized.