Columbus-area man gets new MS drug
Crumbley is first in the US to receive treatment
Dante Crumbley considers himself fortunate.
A decade ago, when the now-32-year-old Reynoldsburg resident first got the phone call from his neurologist’s office, asking him to come in that same day for the results of a recent MRI, his mother and sister both took off work to go with him.
That’s when he received the diagnosis: He had multiple sclerosis.
“I didn’t have a lot of information on MS, so I won’t say that I was scared or anything; it was just like, ‘OK, what are our next steps?’” Crumbley said. “It was like, ‘Yeah, I need my life; I need to be able to enjoy my life.’ I was having issues with my legs and with walking and with running, so I was like, ‘We need to get this under control.’”
Crumbley is the first person in the United States to undergo the hourlong, twice-a-year infusion of a new medication called Briumvi after it gained approval from the Food and Drug Administration in late December. His first treatment — given in two installments — took place Feb. 1 and on Wednesday morning at Ohiohealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus.
Although there is no known cure for the disease, which attacks the nervous system, researchers continue to look for new ways of suppressing its symptoms, which include neurological issues and can result in brain or “We love doing the research because we know that we need to keep getting better with this disease. We haven’t mastered it, but we’re getting better every year that goes by. It’s really exciting to have patients willing to be part of the process.” Geoffrey Eubank, chief of general neurology and principal trial investigator
spinal cord damage, said Dr. Jacqueline Nicholas, chief of neuroimmunology and multiple sclerosis and director of MS research at the Ohiohealth Multiple Sclerosis Center.
The earliest treatments for the disease came out in the 1990s and involved self-administered, at-home injections that not everyone could tolerate and weren’t quite as effective for some patients, Nicholas said. In 2004, one of the first infusion therapies came out, which later became monthly infusions. A twice-yearly IV infusion came in 2017, but even then, some patients didn’t always react well.
Even now, with so many options, many treatments still take hours to administer, she said.
“Now to be able to come in and receive that medicine in an hour, twice a year is quite a move forward,” said Nicholas, who has treated Crumbley since 2015. “We’re really excited about it.”
In addition to being the first in the country to infuse the medication, Ohiohealth also was involved in the multisite, multinational trial that led to the FDA approving it.
“We love doing the research because we know that we need to keep getting better with this disease,” said Dr. Geoffrey Eubank, chief of general neurology and principal trial investigator. “We haven’t mastered it, but we’re getting better every year that goes by. It’s really exciting to have patients willing to be part of the process.
“We’ve been doing clinical research here for over a quarter of a century on MS specifically, and we’ve been involved in many of the major trials with the drugs that are coming to fruition.”
At least 30 to 40 people played a substantial role in the research, Eubank said.
While it’s still too soon to tell how Crumbley is responding to the new treatment, clinical trials showed it reduced relapse rates by over 50% and shut down active inflammation by 97%, compared to pills, Nicholas said.
“That is incredible,” she said. “It’s a highly effective therapy and an excellent option for a patient who has newly diagnosed MS or very active MS.”
Crumbley is optimistic the new treatment will allow him to continue living his life, as he has for the past decade.
“I’m praying that this is the medicine that works, and this medicine I can tolerate well and that we don’t have to switch to anything else,” he said. “There are people that have had way worse. … In the end of it, I’m fortunate, and I’m grateful to have the advances in medicine and to be able to have the options.
“We’re kind of holding our breath until I do my first MRI, which will be six months down the line, to make sure the therapy is working and it (the disease) is not progressing.”