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The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) has opened the BEAT-MS clinical trial for enrollment. BEAT-MS or “Best Available Therapy vs. Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (AHSCT) for MS” will investigate high dose immunosuppression followed by AHSCT – a type of transplant using a patient’s own immune stem cells – compared to the best medical treatment currently available for multiple sclerosis (MS) in participants with relapsing MS.

The Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) is currently developing a clinical trial to test a new treatment for vitiligo, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks pigment containing cells in the skin leading to disfiguring white spots.

The ITN is currently seeking proposals for clinical trials for novel therapeutic approaches to induce B cell tolerance in patients who are donor-sensitized and/or to prevent sensitization.

The gold standard to diagnose food allergy is an oral food challenge (OFC), but it can cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals. Reliable in vitro tests would eliminate undesirable aspects of OFCs, allowing easier and safer diagnoses and assessments of clinical responses to treatments.

This week on WRVO Public Radio's Take Care, hosts Lorraine Rapp and Linda Lowen talk with Dr. Gerald Nepom, director of the Immune Tolerance Network, about the ITN's LEAP study and the new guidelines for the introduction of peanut products that might prevent high risk children from developing the allergy.

In an important follow-up to LEAP-On, which demonstrated that the early introduction of peanut in high-risk infants led to durable prevention of peanut allergy, the investigators now show that early consumption of peanut in infants at high risk of peanut allergy is allergen-specific and does not prevent the development of other allergic disease to other foods, aeroallergens, or allergic reactions to tree nuts and sesame.