The field of treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) has grown quickly in the last 30 years, but the next new class of therapies probably won’t come to market for at least another year and a half, said Daniel Kantor, MD, president of Kantor Neurology.
The field of treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) has grown quickly in the last 30 years, but the next new class of therapies probably won’t come to market for at least another year and a half, said Daniel Kantor, MD, president of Kantor Neurology.
Are there any particular multiple sclerosis trials that you’re keeping an eye on?
The field of MS is exciting. We’ve gone from having zero disease-modifying therapies in 1992, to our first medication in 1993, to, now, having 17 separate products. It’s amazing the leap forward. We now have 14 branded products, we have 2 unbranded generics, and 1 branded generic. That’s an amazing leap forward. That’s faster than anything in neurology, and frankly, faster than most things in medicine.
That means that we’re always looking at the results of new studies that are coming out. Every year for the next several years we’re going to see 1 to 2 new medications coming out. We’ve recently had 2 approvals by the Food and Drug Administration. And we’ll probably se within the next 12 months, we’ll probably see a few more approvals. One of them may be a medication that simply the same medication but just less side effects from one of our common disease-modifying therapies that people take orally twice a day.
Another medication is in a class of medications called S1P, or sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor modulators, and it’s going to be coming out probably within the next 12 to 14 months. Then, we’re going to see other medications that are follow-up medications to other medications that we have, such as, B-cell depleting medications.
We’re not going to see another medication that is a disease-modifying therapy that is from a different class for at least the next year and a half. And that first one might be a BTK inhibitor, or Burton tyrosine kinase inhibitor. And that medication will be an oral medicine. We may or may not see these come to the market. There’s a little bit of a race going on to see who comes out first. And this will be yet another way of treating multiple sclerosis.
The real hope in MS, though, is not just in relapsing forms of MS. It’s really looking at primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis, as well as a ways of repairing the damage that’s already happened in multiple sclerosis.
