EAN 2025 | Perivascular cuffs and their association with B- and T-cell interaction and lesion formation in MS
Joost Smolders, MD, PhD, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, Netherlands, comments on the significance of perivascular cuffs in multiple sclerosis (MS), highlighting their association with local B- and T-cell interaction and lesion formation. Dr Smolders highlights that there is an accumulation of B-cells within these cuffs, making them a potential target for treatment with BTK inhibitors. This interview took place at the 11th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN 2025) in Helsinki, Finland.
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Transcript
With my research group, we are studying post-mortem human brain tissue of the Netherlands Brain Bank. We try to understand how MS works, the mechanisms. And one of the things which are typical to people with MS is that they show these perivascular aggregates of lymphocytes called cuffs, and with this project, we try to understand if and how these lymphocytes in these cuffs contribute to the pathology of multiple sclerosis...
With my research group, we are studying post-mortem human brain tissue of the Netherlands Brain Bank. We try to understand how MS works, the mechanisms. And one of the things which are typical to people with MS is that they show these perivascular aggregates of lymphocytes called cuffs, and with this project, we try to understand if and how these lymphocytes in these cuffs contribute to the pathology of multiple sclerosis. And what we showed is that these cuffs are a quite typical environment with a lot of T-cells, a lot of different T-cells than we regularly see in the white matter. And especially when these cuffs are in the neighborhood of lesions, we see a lot of B-cells accumulating in these cuffs. And really, this points towards a role of B-cells in lesion formation and activity in multiple sclerosis. And this is important because we also noticed, for instance, that BTK expression is really high in these B-cells and in these cuffs, and this could really also mean that these cuffs could be a target for these novel upcoming BTK inhibitors as MS therapies.
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