MRTCs, Masking/Suppressing, and Some Thoughts

Lars · Post by **Lars** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:43 pm

Jane,
It's nice to occasionally focus on someone who is sicker than myself.
Lars

patrickm · Post by **patrickm** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:28 pm

Lars wrote:Jane,
It's nice to occasionally focus on someone who is sicker than myself.
Lars

[Patrick high fives Lars]

Loobie · Post by **Loobie** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:23 am

HA!. That's a good one Lars, kudos. Man this political season is getting fun! It's funny to watch such "high intellect" people posture and pose and do anything for the most undesirable job in the world. If only they were doing it from a deep sense of public service and not just for the power.

I want Reagan back! WAAAHH!

By the way, that's not me announcing my membership to the RNC. I'm like Obama in that I think Washington is broke, but I don't have any inklings or opinions on how to fix it. I just hope that someone a whole lot smarter than me can. It's just that we are in the place in our societal progression whereby the electorate has started to vote itself contributions from the treasury. Stopping that will be next to impossible. We already have major entitlement programs that we don't know how to fund. Oh my God, I'm talking about politics on this page. I'm sorry everyone! I'll stop now.

Lars · Post by **Lars** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:33 am

Loobie,
Politics on this site should be an important subject. I can't speak for everyone, but for me health care concerns are huge. How about some health care sprinkled with stem cells? We need a lobbyist.
Lars

IHaveMS-com · Post by **IHaveMS-com** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:24 am

Hi to all,

There were 2 interesting facts, at least to me, which were in the latest press release about my study. http://tinyurl.com/6f7f36 The first one was a break down of the study participants into RRMS and SPMS. I could tell from previous data that Tovaxin must work for SPMS, but this report shows that 41% of the study participants had SPMS. Without breaking the study population into RRMS and SPMS, one can only speculate how beneficial Tovaxin is in treating SPMS.

The “intent to treat” population of 22 patients included 13 with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and nine with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS). An analysis of disease progression of disability over a two year period, as measured by a 1.0 or greater change in Expanded Disability Scoring Scale (EDSS), showed that 27.3% of patients demonstrated sustained improvement, 59.1% had no disease progression and 13.6% experienced sustained worsening of disability. The improvement in the EDSS scores ranged from 1.0 to 4.5 (average 2.41). During the two-year study period 72.7% of patients remained relapse-free.

The second point was about epitope shifts. I know during the first 2 years, I did not have any epitope shifts in my set of MRTCs. Since I was only aware of what was going on with my MRTCs, I, from a sample of one, felt that epitope shifts were either unlikely or slow to occur.

I have always answered questions using my own experience or by asking those who are on the cutting edge, such as Dr. Zhang and others involved in T-Cell vaccine. So, if you are keeping score, this goes in the error column. Another error occurred when I said you could not transfer from one site to another. I have been flying to Houston for over 5 years, and will continue flying there until Tovaxin is approved. In my study you cannot transfer to another site; in the current IIb trial and extension, you can transfer to another site.

I have put my cape in the closet. If I find any other misstatements, I will be sure to point them out. If you are deciding to be a lab rat, that decision should be based on the best possible information available at that time.

“Approximately three out of four patients re-treated in the second year exhibited a change in their myelin-reactive T-cell profile, which was the basis for producing their individualized T cell vaccine,” said David McWilliams, president and chief executive officer of Opexa. “We believe this new data supports the continuation of our development strategy of individually monitoring patients with our proprietary epitope analysis assay and re-treating them with a patient-specific therapeutic vaccine that associates with their clinical status.”

Lyon · Post by **Lyon** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:38 pm

TWG · Post by **TWG** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 3:40 pm

I always thought it was a Dr. Who TARDIS, for those who know what that is....

IHaveMS-com · Post by **IHaveMS-com** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:21 pm

I did not know what a TARDIS is, but Wikipedia knows everything. It even knows about Tovaxin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tovaxin and has a link to my site.

The TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension(s) in Space) is a time machine and spacecraft in the British science fiction television program Doctor Who.

patrickm · Post by **patrickm** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:18 pm

IHaveMS-com wrote: I have put my cape in the closet. If I find any other misstatements, I will be sure to point them out. If you are deciding to be a lab rat, that decision should be based on the best possible information available at that time.

d00d! Give yourself a break there!

You have been one of the three or four most helpful people with my adjustment to having MS and you've barely even corresponded with me. I feel pretty confident that this would be true hundreds of times over.

Nobody's perfect and at worst you're guilty of a couple of fair assumptions based upon your concrete experience. Sheesh!

Thanks so much for the time you have taken to share your life and experiences with us, the encouragement that you have given both directly and indirectly, and your insights sprinkled liberally with humor and self-deprecation.

In other news, just back from the Second City E.T.C. stage and the show features a fairly long sketch about MS. One of the actors has MS and the sketch is 3 couples sitting around drinking wine, talking, and sharing stupid jokes and incidents and things they hate, when one of the women just bums them all out by bringing up her MS. What follows was a VERY funny series of uncomfortable moments including many of the stereotypical things we've all either said or heard said. Was worth the price of admission alone. I thought the whole thing was hysterical. The rest of the audience was pretty quiet during some of the more uncomfortable bits though. I guess she's done a one woman show on MS as well.

Overall, the show was very political and fantastic. The most I've laughed on a night out in a long time.

TWG · Post by **TWG** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 6:41 pm

This is where "Tim" discusses epitope shifts and MRTC masking etc.
on epitope shifts he says:

"The second point was about epitope shifts. I know during the first 2 years, I did not have any epitope shifts in my set of MRTCs. Since I was only aware of what was going on with my MRTCs, I, from a sample of one, felt that epitope shifts were either unlikely or slow to occur."

MRTC masking is in other areas as well. Make me still interested in continuing despite less than my dazzling results.