Conference Chair Dr Daniel Ontaneda Previews ACTRIMS Forum 2024

Cleveland Clinic's Daniel Ontaneda, MD, PhD, the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) Forum 2024 chair, discussed what attendees can expect at this year's meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida. Ontaneda also explained how this year's theme of "Breaking Barriers in MS" will be implemented throughout the meeting.

Transcript

What can attendees look forward to at ACTRIMS Forum 2024?

I think, increasingly, ACTRIMS 2024 and the annual ACTRIMS Forum meeting has become the go-to place for both clinicians and scientists seeking information, updates, presenting research in multiple sclerosis [MS]. I think the meeting has grown from what was a small meeting now almost 10 years ago to a meeting that now is much larger and much more involved.

I think what the Forum retains is being a themed meeting, one. Two, being a single-track meeting, that is, you don't have 1000 different things going on at the same time; you don't have to pick between anything. Then, the somewhat smaller networking environment that occurs at the meeting.

We place a big emphasis on the scientific program of the meeting. Getting people to the meeting that are residents and trainees is important for ACTRIMS. For all the people that are coming to the meeting, I think it's an opportunity, (1) to network, (2) to learn about the latest development in MS research, and (3) to potentially form what is going to be the building blocks of the overall MS culture and where the science is going to be directed over the next following years. We had to do them [ACTRIMS Forum meetings] virtually for some time because of the pandemic. Now that we're fully out of that, being able to do it in person really has no replacement.

One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that we do have a cutting-edge late-breaking science session that was added on Saturday. That session is a session that was designed for the presentation of phase 3 clinical trials. At this meeting, we are going to hear the complete results of the evobrutinib phase 3 study results, which I think everybody has eagerly been anticipating looking at those results. I know there was a press release that already gave us an idea, but certainly hearing the details of those results are really important for our field.

I think it's important for our field because there's a lot of companies that are investing in these BTKi [Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor] medications. I think knowing what direction we're going to take based on the results of this trial are important. So, we're going to actually have a couple of BTKi trials presented.

I think it also reflects back on the importance of ACTRIMS as a meeting. Us presenting a phase 3 trial at the Forum is something that is new for us. We typically didn't focus on these types of abstracts, and now we are, and we are super glad that the authors of that paper selected our meeting and are presenting it here.

This year's theme is "Breaking Barriers in MS." How will this be represented throughout the conference?

It's always a little bit of a challenge when you're selecting a theme for the meeting, and I think we rapidly arrived at this "Breaking Barriers in MS" because I think it can have several meanings depending on where you focus it from. I think one of the things about the themes is that they have to be broad enough so that they can capture the attention of basic scientists, clinical scientists, and epidemiologists.

When we talked about breaking barriers, I think one of the things that we were talking about was primarily breaking down barriers in terms of access, in terms of how we think about MS; I think that was, I would say, the primary one. Multiple sclerosis is no longer considered a disease of White individuals, it's now considered a disease that affects all globally. So, breaking down the barriers in that sense of thinking of MS as a disease that affects all individuals across all countries in all geographies I think was important and something that really is at the forefront of the type of work that we're doing in MS now.

Breaking down barriers for us also alludes to the barriers that we still have in place and difficulty in fully curing the disease and also fully treating the disease. So, certainly, there's barriers to how one can develop medications, how one can get medications to work, and the barriers between how animal models might not translate perfectly into human disease.

Then, finally, the last barriers topic that we thought was appropriate for the meeting was something that we talk about a lot, which is the blood-brain barrier. This is, "How does stuff from the periphery get into the brain?" And, equally, "If this is something that's starting in the brain, how does that reflect back out in the periphery?"

The blood-brain barrier has been really the source of attention for researchers for many years, and now that we know that there's several new compartments involved, including CNS [central nervous system] lymphatics, including the presence of compartmentalized inflammation, how perhaps soluble substances are making their way from, for example, the ventricles into brain tissue, are stuff that's really cutting edge, and I think we wanted to focus a little bit of the research on that.