The Russian University of Medicine and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Russia
Neurological diseases such as
Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS) and related conditions can be
difficult to diagnose and treat, because the same disease may cause different
symptoms in individual patients. But they have high degrees of genetic and
pathophysiological heterogeneity, irrespective of clinical manifestations.
Advances in disease modeling and methodological design have paved the way for
the development of Personalized & Precision Medicine (PPM), and PPM-driven
Neurology as well.For many neurodegenerative
diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and related conditions, conventional
drug development strategies have barely scratched the surface in curing the
disease in patients. Meanwhile, patient and persons-at-risk phenotyping is
considered today as the collection of information that best captures the
presentation of their medical conditions. And in this context, the biomarkers of
the next step generation enable pre-early diagnosis, guide targeted therapy and
monitor the active ty and therapeutic responses across the diseases. Moreover,
novel biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases may surpass these issues,
especially for early identification of disease risk. Biomarkers are critical
for the targeted identification of specific molecules, cells, tissues, or
proteins that dramatically alter throughout the progression of neurodegenerative
conditions.In recent decades, biomarkers
have been progressively incorporated in clinical routine and clinical trials in
the field of neurology. The arsenal of biomarkers in neuropathology is likely
to keep growing as our ability to measure accurately multiple biological
variables and our knowledge about the pathophysiology of the neurodegenerative
diseases increase.A major advance in the field of
neurology has been the development of blood-based biomarkers. Despite initial
scepticism in peripheral markers due to the physical restrictions imposed by
the blood brain barrier, recent technological advances have made possible to
measure bioanalytes in different biofluids in very low concentrations. The new
instruments are mostly based on immunochemical assays and mass-spectrometry,
which provide an optimal analytical sensitivity. A key advance in the field is
the possibility to measure protein biomolecules in blood as a measure of
neuronal and/or myelin damage in a wide range of neurological conditions, such
as neurodegenerative disorders and multiple sclerosis, in particular!Among the best-validated predictive
biomarkers are autoimmunity-related ones to predict and prognosticate risks of
the chronification, complications and thus disabling. The latter is so much
valuable and important since chronic autoimmune inflammation course is
structured to consist from different stages including subclinical and clinical
ones.Multiple sclerosis (MS) is just
one of the chronic tissue-specific autoimmune diseases resulting in a
destruction of myelin by different tools, including autoAbs of very broad
specificity. Along with canonical Abs, some of the families proven to occur are
Abs possessing with catalytic activity (abzymes), and thus to belong to Abs
with functionality!Abs against myelin basic
protein/MBP endowing with proteolytic activity (Ab-proteases with functionality)
are of great value to monitor demyelination to illustrate the evolution of MS. Anti-MBP autoAbs from MS patients
and mice with EAE exhibited specific proteolytic cleavage of MBP which, in
turn, markedly differed between: (i)
MS patients and healthy controls; (ii)
different clinical MS courses; (iii)
EDSS scales of demyelination to correlate with the disability of
MS patients to predict the transformation prior to changes of the
clinical course.Ab-mediated
proteolysis of MBP was shown to be sequence-specific whilst demonstrating five sites of preferential proteolysis
to be located within the immunodominant
regions of MBP and to fall inside into 5 sequences
fixed. Some of the latter (with the highest encephalitogenic properties) were
proved to act as a specific inducer of EAE and to be attacked by the
MBP-targeted Ab-proteases in MS patients with the most severe (progradient)
clinical courses. The other ones whilst being less immunogenic happened to be
EAE inducers very rare but were shown to be attacked by Ab-proteases in MS
patients with moderate (remission-type) courses.The activity of Ab-proteases was first registered at the subclinical stages 1-2
years prior to the clinical illness. About 24% of the direct MS-related relatives
were seropositive for low-active Ab-proteases from which 22% of the
seropositive relatives established were being monitored for 2 years whilst
demonstrating a stable growth of the Ab-associated proteolytic activity.
Moreover, some of the low-active Ab-proteases in persons at MS-related risks
(at subclinical stages of MS), and primary clinical and MRT manifestations
observed were coincided with the activity to have its mid-level reached. Registration
in the evolution of highly immunogenic Ab-proteases would illustrate
either risks of transformation of subclinical stages into clinical ones, or
risks of exacerbations to develop. And the “escalation” illustrating
re-orientation of the sequence specificity to focus on the more important
targeted sites for proteolysis might be an early prognostic and/or predictive
sign to monitor demyelination progressing and thus the clinical illness to
come. The activity of Ab-proteases in combination with the sequence-specificity
would confirm a high subclinical and predictive (translational) value of the tools as
applicable for personalized monitoring protocols.Sequence-specific Ab-proteases
have proved to be greatly informative and thus valuable biomarkers to monitor
MS at both subclinical and clinical stages! And the translational potential of
this knowledge is in the rational design of new diagnostic tools and new
therapeutics based on principles of artificial biocatalysts and Biodesign.Ab-proteases can be programmed
and re-programmed to suit the needs of the body metabolism or could be designed
for the development of principally new catalysts with no natural counterparts. Therefore,
the proposed predictive value of MBP-targeted Ab-proteases for the development
of MS is being challenged! Of tremendous value in this sense are Ab-proteases directly
affecting the physiologic remodelling of tissues with multilevel architectonics (for
instance, myelin)., whilst securing the requests and standards of regeneration
and remyelinationSo, further studies on Ab-mediated
MBP degradation and other targeted Ab-mediated proteolysis may provide
biomarkers of newer generations and thus a supplementary tool for assessing the
disease progression and predicting disability of the patients and persons-at-risks.
In years to come, we will see new additional
exciting biomarkers that will allow detection of neurological diseases at the pre-early
(subclinical) disease stages and simultaneous monitoring of multiple biological
pathways in response to sophisticated therapeutic interventions.
Sergey Suchkov graduated from Astrakhan State Medical University and awarded with MD, then in 1985 maintained his PhD at the I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy and in 2001, maintained his doctorship Degree at the Nat Inst of Immunology, Russia. At present, Dr Sergey Suchkov is a Chair, Dept for Personalized Medicine, Precision Nutriciology and Biodesign of the Institute for Biotech & Global Health of RosBioTech and Professor of the Dept for Clinical Allergology & Immunology of A.I. Evdokimov MGMSU, Russia.