Past Episodes

Welcome back to Part Two of our coverage of the 2026 ACTRIMS Forum. This week, we shift our focus to emerging therapies and clinical insights that are re-shaping the future of MS care. From the latest information on stem cell transplantation to evolving treatment strategies to the labels used to describe MS, we're breaking down the complex science into the conversations that matter most to the MS community. Joining me to discuss one of the most significant presentations from the 2026 ACTRIMS Fo...

Last week, over 1,400 scientists and clinicians gathered in San Diego, California, at the 2026 Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis annual meeting, better known as the ACTRIMS Forum. This week, in Part One of our coverage, you'll hear from three of the experts who presented their research at the ACTRIMS Forum. Dr. Manuel Friese, a clinician-scientist at the Institute of Neuroimmunology and Multiple Sclerosis at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Ha...

This past December, the FDA issued a Complete Response Letter to drug manufacturer Sanofi in response to Sanofi's application seeking approval for Tolebrutinib, the first in a new category of investigational disease-modifying therapies to undergo FDA review. A Complete Response Letter is an official letter from the FDA to a drug manufacturer stating that the agency can't approve a new medicine in its current form. It's not an outright "no" that kills a project; it's more like a "not yet." Howev...

The first coordinated global research strategy to prevent MS has been announced. This week, Dr. Bruce Bebo, the National MS Society's Executive Vice President and Chief Research & Medical Affairs Officer, joins me to explain what MS prevention looks like and how experts plan to achieve this remarkable goal. We'll also tell you who won the 2025 Barancik Prize for Innovation in MS Research, and we'll explain how their groundbreaking research impacts MS care. We're sharing the details of a newly ...

One of the more confusing aspects of MS is that it can present differently from one person to the next. A research team at University College London may have uncovered a reason for that when they identified two new, and quite different, subtypes of MS. Joining me to walk us through this discovery and to explain how it may impact MS clinical care is the study's principal investigator, Dr. Arman Eshaghi. We're also sharing study results that may explain how the Epstein-Barr Virus triggers MS in ...

I don't have to remind anyone who listens to this podcast that the cost of MS disease-modifying therapies is obscenely high. And we're not just talking about relatively new medications. Older medications -- some decades old -- continue to increase in price without any rational explanation for why or how. On January 2nd, we lost a true warrior in the ongoing battle to lower the price of prescription drugs when David Mitchell, the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, passed away. I met Davi...

Scientists are expanding our understanding of MS at an unprecedented pace. This week, Dr. Leorah Freeman discusses why, as new discoveries and medications enter clinical practice, neurologists and MS specialists should ask themselves 3 important questions when considering a patient's treatment plan. Dr. Freeman is the Director of the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Center at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also leads the MS and Neuroimmunology fellowsh...

We're closing out the year by revisiting the most listened-to episode of RealTalk MS in 2025. And it shouldn't come as a major surprise that this year's most listened-to episode was our review of the largest MS research conference in the world, ECTRIMS. This episode features the annual conversation that I have with Dr. Bruce Bebo, right outside of the conference center, just minutes after ECTRIMS adjourns. Dr. Bebo is the Executive Vice President of Research at the National MS Society, and each...

The holiday season gives me the opportunity to indulge in what's become a RealTalk MS tradition. I reserve the last two episodes in December to revisit the most popular conversations that I've had over the past year. Women represent two-thirds of the MS population. Yet, surprisingly, there isn't nearly enough data related to women's health issues and MS. With an estimated 300,000 women living with MS in the United States who are currently in peri- or post-menopause, researchers have started to ...

As the year draws to a close, we wanted to share some of the most compelling conversations we've had over the past 12 months. And rather than make my own picks, we went through the hundreds of emails we've received over the past year from the RealTalk MS listener community to see which topics really connected with you. In this week's episode, you'll hear from four of the top MS experts in the world discussing the subjects you've told me are most important to you. First, we'll explore aging and ...