The federal government has announced the next step in its plan to test the so-called "liberation" treatment for multiple sclerosis, while the provincial health minister said Saskatchewan is willing to participate in that project as well as forge ahead with its own initiative.
Canada's minister of health and the president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced Friday the CIHR is ready to accept research proposals for initial phases of a clinical trial on chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI). In June, Ottawa accepted the recommendation of CIHR's scientific expert working group on CCSVI and MS to undertake a small-scale clinical trial.
"It certainly was good news," Saskatchewan Health Minister Don McMorris said from the federal, provincial and territorial health ministers meeting in Halifax, N.S., where the announcement was made.
"A year ago, we as a province had been talking about clinical trials and moving forward with clinical trials," McMorris said. "Today, now they're announcing they're going to move ahead with clinical trials."
The main objective of the trial is to determine the safety of venous angioplasty and collect better evidence on patient outcomes. Liberation therapy involves angioplasty to widen neck veins and is based on the theory of Italian surgeon Dr. Paolo Zamboni that MS is linked to narrowed or blocked veins in the neck or spine, a condition for which he coined the term CCSVI.
CIHR will announce the successful research team in March. The applications received will undergo rigorous review by an international peer committee that will be established during the coming weeks.
The selected team will then need to obtain ethics approval from relevant institutional research ethics boards before conducting the trial.
"The time frame is out a year or so by the time people are actually in clinical trials, which again shows to me our stance is right and moving forward much quicker," said McMorris, noting people from Saskatchewan might be able to participate sooner in a trial the province has joined with researchers from the Albany Medical Centre in Albany, N.Y. An announcement related to that project is expected soon, he said.
As for what involvement Saskatchewan might have in the federal trial, McMorris said that "remains to be seen," but noted he has indicated to Ottawa the province is willing support or participate in the trial in any way it can, though the provincial government is "still moving ahead with our own."
McMorris credited the leadership of Premier Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party government for forward movement on the issue, noting other provinces and the federal government have changed positions on support for research into the procedure.
The Sask. Party government has been in the lead on the issue nationally, with Wall last year announcing millions for clinical trials of the therapy. In December, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) issued a call for proposals and the province said clinical trials were to begin later this year.
But earlier this year, both the foundation and the Saskatoon-based research team that had made the single proposal to the SHRF said more scientific research is needed before a broad trial such as the one proposed in Saskatchewan could move ahead.
What the federal government is proposing is a smaller trial than what was originally proposed by Saskatchewan, which has one of the highest rates of MS in the country.
After the bid for a Saskatchewan-based trial failed, the provincial government announced it would pay for 80 to 90 multiple sclerosis patients to participate in the Albany-based clinical trial of the therapy.