BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

IL-1 receptor antagonists in ALS

July 15, 2010 7:00 AM UTC

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology have shown that inhibiting the IL-1 receptor improves survival in a mouse model of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.1Although efficacy results in mouse models of the disease have a notoriously poor record for translating into human efficacy, the path should be open to human clinical testing: 1 IL-1 receptor antagonist is on the market and at least 10 other companies have IL-1 receptor antagonists or antibodies against its ligand, IL-1b, in development.

In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), motor neurons in the CNS degenerate, leading to muscle weakness, paralysis and death. The most common form of the disease, nonfamilial, sporadic ALS, has no clear genetic basis. Familial ALS occurs in 5%-10% of patients, and about one-quarter of those cases are linked to mutations in the gene coding for superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) that lead to pathogenic misfolded forms of the protein in neurons and glial cells...