Hi Judy,

I have long been excited by the concept of Tovaxin. Dr. Jinwu Zhang -- still at Baylor I think -- has been researching this therapy since at least the early 90s. The initial formulation was monovalent -- which meant that it had the effect of only deactivating one type autoreactive T-cell primed for one particular protein. The first trial results with this formulation were ok but not spectacular.

The researchers then created a trivalent formulation which deactivated three types of autoreactive T-cells primed for three types of proteins. Given what we now know about MS, this made much more sense, and the trial results from this formulation looked great.

The trial is a phase IIb trial so even if successful, the company will still need to conduct a phase III trial, so unfortunately approval of the therapy seems years away -- the company optimistically says "2010". Dr. Edward Fox is the lead clinician on the trial, and certainly he's a known name in MS research.

At one of the other forums, some hubbub was created (I believe) by the fact that someone who was using Tovaxin successfully, and touting the therapy on the internet, had a financial interest in the therapy (or at least his parents did).

But again, Dr. Fox is for real, the company (Opexa) is for real (and just raised $23 million), and the trial is for real. (The company just changed their name from PharmaFrontiers back to Opexa.) The government trial page for Tovaxin lists all the sites participating in the trial, as well as exclusion criteria. Unfortunately the trial seems to be excluding anyone with progressive forms of MS.

Re: Lamictal, sorry you had problems. The potentially fatal Stevens-Johnson rash is the big worry. Another problem is interaction with other drugs -- as one person put it "Lamictal interacts with drugs you don't even take".

Wannabe: Yes would be interesting if MS neuroprotection became the reason the US government was forced to admit the utility of medical marijuana.

Mark