Copaxone Results Encourage Investigators

Paul Gordon, associate medical director at the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig MDA/ALS Center at Columbia University in New York, and colleagues, have found that glatiramer acetate, better known as Copaxone, was safe and well tolerated in people with ALS, and that the participants showed evidence of altered immune-system activity with the drug.

Gordon reported the results at the 16th International ALS/MND Symposium, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December.

Thirty people with ALS participated in this six-month trial of Copaxone, a drug approved for use in multiple sclerosis. Those who received Copaxone injections were compared to an untreated control group (from another study).

Copaxone is thought to help in multiple sclerosis by boosting production of cells that suppress the immune system, the so-called “suppressor T-cells.”

Gordon, who hopes to take trials of Copaxone in ALS into the next phase, says the results are meaningful “because we showed that we can alter the immune system in ALS patients the same way that it’s done in patients with multiple sclerosis, where the treatment is effective in slowing the course of the illness. Whether these changes will correlate with clinical outcomes needs to be determined in trials powered to assess clinical efficacy.”