Photo: Steve Babuljak
The world may be on the cusp of a cure for multiple sclerosis, which a generation ago limited people to walkers and wheelchairs or their bed within 15 years of diagnosis. “The battle is not yet won, but all of the pieces are in place to soon reach the finish line — a cure for MS,” says UC San Francisco neurology professor Stephen Hauser. But the initial breakthrough almost didn’t happen. Federal funding for the first clinical trial of rituximab based on the revolutionary idea that MS could be stopped in its tracks by killing B-cells and the proteins they produce, was rejected but pharmaceutical company Genentech, co-founded by UCSF professors, agreed to fund a trial. That led to the 2017 development of ocrelizumab and ofatumumab in 2020. This trio of drugs is now standard treatment globally.
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