Progressive MS patients given new hope in world first drug trial

Channel 4

23-05-2025

Living the high life – management consultant Brad Johnson was working long hours, travelling all over the world, having the best time.
Now he leaves his flat – in his words – under exceptional circumstances.
'I get very tired, I have to plan when I'm going, and it takes quite a lot, actually, to get me out the house, so it has to be a great event, or something, for me to leave,' he said.
Eight years ago at just 30 years old, Brad was diagnosed with primary
progressive multiple sclerosis.
It is a form of MS where the symptoms gradually worsen – without remission.
'My friends said you should go to a doctor because you complain your legs are feeling heavy, you're not walking very far.
'There were a few odd things, like getting turned away from a department store, always seeming like the drunkest person at a party, that kind of thing. So I went to a doctor and my GP immediately said, 'Just stand still in a room, and close your eyes.' I was shaking all over the place.'
The cruelty for Brad is there are almost no treatments for the more than 75,000 people in the UK affected by progressive MS.
'I get very tired, I have to plan when I'm going, and it takes quite a lot, actually, to get me out the house so it has to be a great event, or something, for me to leave.'
– Brad Johnson
But now there is the
world first Octopus trial
– comparing several potential treatments with a placebo. If they don't work they can slot in other drugs – multi-armed and multi-staged is how it is described.
Prof Jeremy Chataway, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, who is leading the trial, said it works by putting patients on two already available drugs and a placebo. They will have an MRI scan and at that point they will carry on recruiting for the trial.
After about a year, they will look at an MRI scan of their brain and decide whether to carry on with all the medications or whether to drop some. That is the multi-stage.
The multi-arm is the point at which they can then look at adding in new medications.
In MS, the protective coating around the nerve is stripped away. In this trial, patients are being given metformin, used in diabetes, which may help regeneration, and lipoic acid, to control inflammation.
This sort of trial has been used for cancer treatments and in Covid. It is faster – they are not developing a drug from the start.
The MS Society is raising money through the
Stop MS Campaign
to fund the trial. Dr Emma Gray, head of clinical trials at the MS Society, said:
'We have had a huge revolution of treatment with people with the relapsing MS, with 20-plus treatments now available.
'Some are better than others, there are some side effects of course, but what is still to crack, and why we need this campaign, is to find treatments for those tens of thousands of people that have progressive MS, and to stop it getting worse.'
Brad Johnson was one of the first recruits to the trial – he doesn't know what he is taking or whether it is working.
But the trial, he said, gives him and others at least some hope.
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