Multiple Sclerosis Discovery: The Podcast Of The Ms Discovery Forum

[intro music]  Host – Dan Keller   Hello, and welcome to Episode Four of Multiple Sclerosis Discovery, the Podcast of the MS Discovery Forum. I’m your host, Dan Keller.  This week’s Podcast features an interview with Dr. Michael Racke about the potassium channel Kir4.1 and its potential role in MS. But to begin, here’s a brief summary of some of the topics we’ve been covering on the MS Discovery Forum at msdiscovery.org.    Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have developed a new remyelination assay that allows high through-put drug screening. The assay takes advantage of oligodendrocyte’s tendency to wrap myelin around anything axon-shaped, such as plastic fibers and microscopic glass pillars. The assay has already identified several FDA-approved drugs as candidates for remyelination therapies, including an over-the-counter antihistamine now in phase II clinical trials.   In another article, we report on a new study that sheds light on the ameliorating effect of ultraviolet rays on infl