Vall d'Hebron Talks by VHIR 'Biomarkers in MS: from CSF to blood'

Speaker: Dr. Nicolás Fissolo, is senior investigator at the Centre d’Esclerosi Multiple de Catalunya (Cemcat) at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona.
He graduated with a degree in biological chemistry at the University of Córdoba, Argentina in 1999. In 2005, he obtained a Ph.D. in human biology from the University of Ulm, Germany for his work in the DNA vaccine field. Afterwards he carried out a 3-year postdoctoral stage at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, in Tübingen, Germany focused in the study of antigen presentation in MS. In 2008, he joined the group of Xavier Montalban, at the Institut de Recerca, Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona where he is currently working.

Abstract: In the context of multiple sclerosis (MS), the need for objective and measurable indicators of the underlying pathological processes is critical to predict response, disease progression, prognosis and outcome of disease. Therefore, the search for biomarkers, is a continuously expanding field, and a large number of molecules have been explored so far; but only a few have been validated, and even fewer are currently used in clinical practice. 
In neurological disorders like MS, because of its close proximity to the target organ, the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will probably capture better the pathological changes taking place in the central nervous system of MS patients. However, due to the difficulties to access to longitudinal CSF samples to follow-up patient’s progression, it should investigate whether the CSF biomarker is also detected in peripheral blood, serum or plasma, and whether the differences observed in protein abundance in the CSF are also present in blood. In this presentation we will discuss the role of different biomarkers in patients with MS, and we will talk about the transition from CSF to blood guided by the evolution of technologies for biomarker detection.

Host: Dr. Manuel Comabella López, main researcher, group Clinical Neuroimmunology at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR)

Register here to attend by Zoom: https://gencat.zoom.us/j/95396181541