Women in Research: Breakthroughs in MS Treatment

She wouldn’t necessarily strike you. She could be the woman in front of you in line at the supermarket, or someone you passed in the park without thinking twice. There’s no outward sign of anything particularly unusual about her, though a sensitive observer might notice a certain set of the mouth and an understated “force” of bearing that would suggest she’s somebody to reckon with.

Her name is Su Metcalfe, or as credentials go, Dr. Su Metcalfe, and she’s a world renowned neuroscience who has innovated a technique for nanoparticle delivery of growth hormone in the treatment of multiple sclerosis that does an end run around the drawbacks of prescriptions drugs. The findings of her research, she says, are “as clear as day.”

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease from which an estimated 2.3 million people suffer, and is characterized by the immune system’s attack on the myelin sheath, the protective casing of nerve cells. Symptoms include poor balance, muscle spasms, and vision problems that can run the range from mild to debilitating.

Current treatments work by killing immune cells (the idea is to attack the attackers), and while this approach succeeds in stopping the immune system from attacking myelin, it also generates an entirely new problem in preventing the immune system from fighting off infection. Though the body is now safe from “itself,” so to speak,  it is now doubly vulnerable to a host of pathogens against which it has become virtually defenseless.

But Metcalfe’s approach is different. Rather than killing off immune cells (an “out of the fire and into the frying pan” approach that prevents the immune system from doing its job), a growth-factor called LIF is delivered directly to areas of nerve damage via nanoparticles, not only preventing the immune system from attacking myelin, but helping to repair myelin damage.

Metcalfe’s destiny as a revolutionary bioscientist isn’t something that could have been easily predicted. Raised with her two siblings in a dirt-floored fisherman’s cottage by her single mother (her father left when she was born) near a harbor in Yorkshire, England, the opportunities of privilege that tend to foster academic excellence and professional distinguishment weren’t exactly in abundance.

But Metcalfe was born with a keen mind and an insatiable curiosity about the natural world that if not fostered by privilege was abetted by her fascination with the sea. Earning a double bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of London and in pathology from Cambridge, she went on to complete her PhD and postdoctoral work (also in pathology) at the latter institution.

In 2013, Metcalfe rolled up her entrepreneurial sleeves and rolled out LIFNano, a company dedicated to developing her new MS treatment. She was recently awarded a prestigious global funding award from Merck Serono that will carry her research into the future. After the success of laboratory research with mice demonstrating that nanoparticle-delivered LIF repaired damaged myelin and were powerful brain protectants, the first clinical trial is set for 2020.

At Lifecycle Biotechnologies, in our role of providing leading-edge tools and services to medical research labs, we’re committed to supporting women in medicine and all fields of research, keeping abreast of the latest scientific discoveries and breakthroughs they make possible. In doing so, we aim to better understand and respond to the needs of the rapidly evolving industry and support our diverse client population across multiple disciplinary domains and market segments.

If you’d like to see how our innovative tools and services can help your lab scale for the research methodologies of the future, contact us today and see what we can do for you.