Researchers at the Hospital Ramón y Cajal de Madrid are antibodies against the protein Hsp90 in patients with multiple sclerosis. This central nervous system disease characterized by chronic demyelination of axons and progressive loss of neuronal function, whose cause is yet determined, although recent studies indicated that it is not only from destruction of myelin or oligodendrocytes that produce it, but it is the lack of remyelination and production of new oligodendrocytes that the chronic.

In this work the authors have linked this alteration in the expression remyelination in the cell surface of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPC), Hsp90 protein-beta (or HSP84). This heat-labile protein that is expressed only, apparently, in the OPC and not in oligodendrocytes, is given a role as a chaperone. The authors describe their results in the identification of specific anti-HSP90-beta in patients with multiple sclerosis, whose recognition of Hsp90 on the cell surface of the OPC induces complement activation, confirming the involvement of immune system development MS. The proposed hypothesis is that anti-Hsp90 antibodies attack their own OPC, inducing the death of them and preventing him remyelination of neural fibers. These results open an avenue to identify the causes of neurodegenerative disease.