Good Things Come in Threes: Genetically Engineered Neural Stem Cells Mitigate Chronic CNS Autoimmunity.

Patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) are now customarily treated with immunomodulatory drugs. These treatments are often successful in reducing the incidence of new acute inflammatory demyelinative plaques but are far less capable of preventing disseminated central nervous system (CNS) axon loss and the resulting progression of nonremitting clinical neurological deficits. This dichotomous response to these immunomodulatory therapies suggests that there is some fundamental pathophysiological difference in MS between the acute plaques and the disseminated axon loss.