"Nature Communications" reported a systematic screening method for common oral drugs, aimed at identifying drugs that are expected to be used in the treatment of advanced multiple sclerosis.
The authors used this method to identify the oral antidepressant clomipramine, which can reduce the symptoms of autoimmune encephalitis (a mouse model of multiple sclerosis). Multiple sclerosis is a multifactorial inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system. It can damage myelin and neurons and is accompanied by severe neurological symptoms. Among patients with multiple sclerosis, the patients with progressive multiple sclerosis are as high as 15%, and the treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis is relatively limited. One of the reasons is that the disease is a multifactorial disease, such as neurodegeneration, abnormal lymphocyte activity and oxidative stress, and current treatment methods cannot solve it at the same time. VoonWeeYong et al. screened 1,040 drugs and selected 249 general oral drugs that can cross the blood-brain barrier. They are then further screened to prevent neurotoxicity, inhibit the proliferation of T lymphocytes, and identify substances with antioxidant activity in cultured cells.
Finally, the author identified the oral antidepressant clomipramine and showed that it can reduce the symptoms of autoimmune encephalitis (multiple sclerosis model) in mice. The author pointed out that the autoimmune encephalitis model does not cover all aspects of progressive multiple sclerosis, but clomipramine is a potential drug that may be further developed.