Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease related to nerve cells in which brain and the spinal cord gets Demyelinated
Multiple Sclerosis is an immune-mediated process in which Central Nervous System (CNS) tissue are damaged due to abnormal response in the immune system of a body. It’s an autoimmune disease.A new study suggests that there is a molecule which is produced by a human cell called taurine which can help in repairing damaged cells in multiple sclerosis.
Taurine is an organic compound present in bile juice produced in the large intestine. It has a major physiological role as inhibitory neurotransmission. It also activates glycine receptor by acting as modulator antianxiety agent in CNS. It also regulates immune system health and antioxidant function. The discovery of the function of taurine in remyelination highlights the potential for a technique called metabolomic profiling.
Metabolic profiling is the measurement in of multiple small molecule i.e. metabolites in a biological system. The measurement of endogenous metabolites provides many prospects to observe the changes induced by external stimuli like drug treatments.
Author Gary Siuzdak, Ph.D., senior director of TSRI’s Scripps Center for Metabolomics and professor of chemistry, molecular and computational biology say that new insight of disease can be seen mechanistically and therapeutically by metabolic profiling. By using taurine in drug therapy for MS demyelination can be reduced but cannot be cured completely.
In the previous studies, researchers showed that the drug which is used in Parkinson’s disease i.e benzotropine can also help in MS disease by repairing damaged nerve cells. Benztropine may mature the oligodendrocyte precursor cells to into myelin-producing oligodendrocytes.
Next step of the researchers was to increase the effect of remyelination inducing drugs. So for that, they teamed up with other scientists to test the potential effect of naturally made metabolites i.e endogenous metabolites on the induction of oligodendrocyte precursor cells. So follow up test showed that taurine can just work as a feedstock i.e it cannot induce the maturation of induction of oligodendrocyte precursor cells all alone instead they can just lend a hand when combined with other drugs like benztropine or miconazole.
“You will get more myelin if you combine taurine with drugs that induce differentiation significantly and enhances the process,” says Lairson.
The advantage of using metabolomics is that they are cheap and commercially accessible as well as they impact phenotype directly and quickly.
