"Just astonishing good news. We are on the way to end Multiple Sclerosis. University research delivers."

[NNadir]

3. While I understand the importance of University research, "breakthrough" announcements of this type...

...are to my mind highly problematic since they often generate false hope.

I recall from many years ago, when the New York Times announced, on the front page, Judah Folkman's discovery of the role of angiogenesis in cancer, a hypothesis he validated by using interferon alpha to block angiogenesis in mouse tumors. He was besieged with calls for access to the protein which was at the time (1980) not accessible via gene modifications. Exasperated, he told a reporter that he could cure cancer in a few mice, but would be unable to produce the protein for humans. (Ultimately anti-angiogensis drugs were developed, notably Avastin, one of the early antibody drugs. It came to market more than 20 years after Folkman's discovery.)

The relationship between anoctamin-2, epstein-barr and the autoimmune cascade response leading to MS has been known for some time, and was reported in 2016 in PNAS (Ayoglu, 2016).

We need to be sober about these reports which can and do generate false hopes.