Moderna press release (5-Jan-2022)
Moderna announces first participant dosed in phase 1 study of its mRNA Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) vaccine.
Moderna expects to enrol approximately 270 participants in the U.S.
EBV is a major cause of infectious mononucleosis, which can debilitate patients for weeks to months; there is no approved vaccine to prevent EBV
EBV can also lead to lifelong medical conditions and is associated with an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis, certain lymphoproliferative disorders, cancers, and autoimmune diseases.
EBV and MS
After reviewing the epidemiological data about the association between EBV and MS in the late nineties I become convinced that EBV is the cause of MS. One of the reasons why I moved academic institutions, from UCL to Queen Mary University of London, was to study EBV and to develop an MS prevention research programme. Despite being very positive I found that it was difficult to convince my colleagues and the wider MS community to invest in EBV-MS research. I was fortunate enough to get an MRC grant application, but since then I must have had at least 20 grant applications around the EBV-MS hypothesis rejected. It is very disheartening when this happens.
The good news is that in 2017 Professor Nick Wald, Director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, suddenly realised that the evidence I had presented to him in 2007 was stronger than he had appreciated and agreed with me that EBV was the likely cause of MS. This lead us to hold a workshop on EBV and MS and led to a successful grant application to the Barts Charity to start the Preventive Neurology Unit (PNU).
I am often asked why has no MS preventative action been taken? I need to remind people that science moves steadily and slowly and the biggest problem we have is the slow adoption, or rejection, of innovations or new ideas.
“The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.” Peter Medawar, Nobel prize laureate, in Physiology or Medicine, 1960.
However, we are pushing on slowly with our plans to create a trial-ready cohort of people at high risk of MS for exploratory MS prevention studies. Dr Ruth Dobson is doing an amazing job at getting this off the ground. We are also taking forward our ideas around treating MS with antivirals that target EBV. To say that the funding for doing these trials has been difficult is an understatement, but I am hoping if we can get pilot data we can convince the sceptics to fund larger more definitive trials.
As you know we are also not the only team working on the EBV hypothesis of MS. Michael Pender in Brisbane, Australia, is doing great things and Atara Bio has taken up the baton in industry. I have recently posted on their preliminary results that were presented at ECTRIMS (Blog Archive 14-Oct-2021).
I spend most of my waking day doing MS and a large part of that is thinking about EBV and MS prevention. The main strand of MS prevention is an EBV vaccination study. The development of an effective vaccine is not in our hands, but the capable hands of Jeff Cohen at the NIH, and now Moderna.
I can’t tell how excited I am that Moderna’s EBV vaccine has entered phase 1 trials and they have openly acknowledged that if it gets to the general public the vaccine may prevent MS. This statement alone is momentous. Why? If we can convince pharma of the importance of the EBV hypothesis maybe we can now convince funders to support a large international MS prevention study.
Even if Moderna proves that their EBV vaccine is effective in preventing EBV infection and infectious mononucleosis we will still have to overcome the public resistance to vaccination and convince public health officials that using EBV vaccination to prevent MS is a worthy objective. The battles ahead are numerous, but we will get there in the end. We have to. We don’t want the next generation of pwMS asking us why we haven’t done anything to prevent MS given the current state of knowledge.
Please read my blog post on how to prove that EBV is the cause of MS (Blog Archive 22-Dec-2018).
General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust and are not meant to be interpreted as personal clinical advice.
Are we one step closer to proving EBV is the cause of MS?