Multiple sclerosis project Platypus gives hope for treatment | The Senior | December 1, 2024
Clinical trials of the Platypus project may offer a hope for reversing neurological damage caused by progressive multiple sclerosis.
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00:00 So the hope for platypus is that we find a medication that can repair damage in progressive MS.
00:08 We simply don't have that medication at the moment. It is the holy grail of MS research.
00:14 If we can find a way to repair the damage, then we might be able to reverse symptoms and make MS a thing of the past.
00:23 It is by far the most severe type of MS and it is also the most debilitating MS.
00:29 The platypus trial is the first trial that we've had in Australia that specifically targets the progressive phase of multiple sclerosis.
00:37 So it's been designed to particularly look at remyelination and the slowing of degeneration that occurs in the late stage of multiple sclerosis.
00:47 I think we have to acknowledge that people living with progressive MS have their lives impacted in every potential way.
00:55 There is no doubt the longer they wait for a cure, the more progression their disease will have and the more impact it will have on their lives.
01:02 This is really a very exciting trial that we're very proud to be spearheading and to be the main funder of.
01:08 And we've got some really exciting plans to look at how we can leverage and magnify the translation impact of research to make people's lives better.
01:17 We hope to do a lot more of that in the future.
01:22 What we're doing is we're taking existing pharmaceutical products used for other diseases that have remyelinating properties
01:30 and seeing if they can be effective for treating progressive forms of MS.
01:34 I mean this is a global problem. There are two and a half or three million people with multiple sclerosis around the world.
01:39 So it takes more than one person, one centre, one country to fight this.
01:46 We're really pleased that we're going to be partnering with a very similar program in the UK called Octopus.
01:52 And together, because it's an adaptive clinical trial, we'll get to the answers further and faster than we would with a traditional clinical trial.
02:00 The effect of MS is to take away the ability to live that life, enjoy that life, contribute to society in a way that you would normally hope to be able to do.
02:18 Anything that can reduce the time that's involved in finding an effective treatment must be fantastic as far as people like me are concerned.
02:31 Time is important for everybody, but time is everything for people with progressive MS.
02:41 They do not have time to wait using traditional clinical trial methods.
02:47 This new way of doing the clinical trial will allow us to get to the results of those answers so much faster.
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