Quick question: What does multiple myeloma have to do with myasthenia gravis (MG)? On the surface, not much—one is a rare cancer of the blood, the other is an autoimmune disease that causes progressive muscle weakness. Different though these diseases are, they may one day share at least one thing in common: A treatment option.
Researchers from Charité University in Berlin, Germany are recruiting participants for a clinical trial to see if the multiple myeloma drug bortezomib (sold under the name VELCADE in the United States) can help improve clinical outcomes in myasthenia gravis. The thinking is this: Bortezomib is a type of drug called a proteasome inhibitor, meaning that it blocks or slows down proteasomes, the part of a cell that breaks down unneeded proteins. When that happens, excess proteins build up in the cell and hasten cell death.
This sounds like a bad thing, but when the cell being targeted is something like a cancer cell that grows and divides rapidly, it can actually slow disease progress.
Charité University in Berlin [Source: Finding Berlin][/caption]Past experiments suggest that autoimmune diseases like myasthenia gravis that produce fast-growing autoantibodies might benefit from being treated with a proteasome inhibitor. To test this theory, the Charité University team will administer bortezomib to patients with MG, systemic lupus erythematosus, and rheumatoid arthritis and measure how it affects the production of disease-specific antibodies over time.
Results won’t be known for some time—the study is still looking for patients and final data collection is estimated for December 2016. But if successful, our friends in Germany could help usher in an exciting new treatment option for MG patients who haven’t responded to current treatments. So cross your frankfurters and hope for the best…
