Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects more than 1 million people in the U.S. But advances in treating the disease continue to be made, especially with new tools for genomic research into the underlying issues that lead to MS. In this video recorded on March 11, 2021, Jason Hall, multimedia specialist with The Motley Fool and the host of Discovery Now, talks with 10x Genomics (TXG +8.24%) CEO and co-founder Serge Saxonov about how genomics research could change how MS is treated.
Jason Hall: One of our members, Paolo, has submitted a question and I want to put a twist on it. Paolo's question is, "Do you view that we're early in the understanding of multiple sclerosis?"
But what I thought would be interesting is thinking about it from that same long-term mindset that you have that phenotype you said and talked about cancer the same way. But let's talk about it with something like MS. It's different in terms of what it is and infects us. Can you elaborate on that?
Serge Saxonov: Yeah. I think there's still quite a bit of unknowns about what causes it, but I think it is an example of a disease that we could be very much on the threshold of really figuring out what is going on. Because it is a disease of the immune system and we are now gaining a really great, fine view of what the immune system does and what is it that it is reacting to, something that only a few years ago we really had no means of doing.
I think we are actually probably on a path to understanding what is it about the immune system that gets dysregulated and again, moving from a place where it was very much a black box to understanding.
Then the next question is, how do we modulate the immune system or the agent that causes that overreaction in the immune system. I think once we understand, we're going to have quite a few tools to affect it as well. I think we're early, but we're not far away from potentially huge advances, I think, at the same time.
