Richard Nash, MD (Colorado Blood Cancer Institute) will be presenting early results from the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) HALT MS clinical trial on December 11, 2011 at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego, CA. The abstract is titled:
Treatment of severe relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis with high-dose immunosuppressive therapy and autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation: Early results of the HALT MS clinical trial
The HALT MS study is investigating whether high-dose immunosuppressive therapy combined with autologous stem cell transplantation can arrest disease activity in multiple sclerosis. This strategy aims to eradicate auto-reactive effector cells using high-dose immunosuppression followed by introduction of autologous stem cells to "reset" the immune system in a tolerogenic manner. Although no longer enrolling, information about the study can be found on the ITN website as well as the study website.