A study at the University of California in San Francisco is showing promise for MS patients: Patients with relapsing-remitting MS are typically treated with global immunosuppressive drugs. These target patients ' T-cells. Global immune suppression means that you really target all components of the immune system -- all cells that are involved in an immune response. And that means, according to Olaf Stuve, M.D., Ph.D., a neurologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas , Tex. , that you're likely shutting off parts of the inflammatory cascade that may actually be beneficial to multiple sclerosis patients. Dr. Stuve says, "We know very little about the immune response of multiple sclerosis. But clearly there are many unknowns or adverse affects associated with global immune suppression."Dr. Stuve is studying the use of the cancer drug rituximab (Rituxan) in MS patients. Rituximab targets B-cells. Dr. Stuve says there may be certain patients whose B-cells, as opposed to T-cells, play a dominant role in their disease. In those cases, Rituximab may work where other global immunosuppressive drugs haven't. It also targets just one aspect of the immune system, which makes it, according to Dr. Stuve, a "more rational sort of treatment than global immune suppression ." Dr. Stuve says side effects experienced from typical treatment and rituximab are fairly similar -- most commonly , flu-like symptoms. However, patients are often treated with chemotherapy, where side effects are much more severe than they appear to be with rituximab. Typical treatments also involve between once-daily and once-weekly injections . With the rituximab clinical trials, patients have one infusion and then around two weeks later, which is repeated every six months -- a big difference from daily or weekly injections. In patients who have been treated with rituximab and haven't responded to other treatments, Dr. Stuve says, "The response to the Rituxan was really dramatic, in terms of not only stopping disease progression but really helping the patients recover some of the neurological function that they had lost in previous month and years.