Love this woman!! Always enjoy these Solve ME/CFS talks, they do really manage to give a unique insight into the machinery of science to us laypeople.
Klimas always presents an optimistic outlook which is good. I am never quite clear exactly what she is doing though! She mentions having a large department, large research funding and great facilities etc. But I am never sure how much of that relates to ME/CFS. Anyway I am very glad she is involved.
Lots of Gulf War stuff, but some ME stuff as well - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nancy_Klimas
At about 8:40, Dr. Klimas say, "In the ME/CFS world, we have the models. We know what to do. We're ready for human clinical trials." Later she says their phase one Gulf War study will be their "proving ground" and will be done in about a year. She also says, "So, I'm hoping to be in a chronic fatigue homeostatic reboot trial by early next year." Since this was filmed in 2017, that might mean early 2018, unless she means early the next year after the Gulf War Illness trial in 2018 - in which case it would be 2019. ETA: I just realized that it's not clear whether she is talking about a "chronic fatigue homeostatic reboot trial" in humans, or in animals "next year" (then again, would you hire clinical coordinators for animals?)
Definitely humans, and she has the funding available for it. It sounds as if she will go ahead with an ME/CFS trial if the GWI trial results are good.
Yeah - It's hard to exactly say, but it sounds like if they get positive results from the GWI trial, then they won't feel the need to develop an animal model for ME/CFS and will rely entirely on the simulations from the In Silico computer system. My impression is that developing the animal model for GWI was probably a lengthy and expensive process, so skipping that step may be what she means by saying that she feels that the "the training wheels will be off" if the initial results from the GWI trial are good.
She says that they have hired coordinator for CFS trial and it will start early next year as in 2018. I don't think we are waiting on results from Gulf War Illness trial, at least that is my impression. Maybe it's a small scale pilot cfs trial but I believe it to be 2018. I think we can second guess who is funding it.
Sort of a recurring theme of Dr. Nahle's interview is that the Solve ME/CFS Initiative is funding some research. He points out that Nancy Klimas' first ME/CFS grant came from The CFIDS Association of America (CAA), the precursor to SMCI. Later he mentions that SMCI has taken a decision to "invest in clinical trials," and finally he mentions that SMCI has just announced a grant for a study involving methylation at Nova Southeastern, Dr. Klimas' university. Around 15:45, Dr. Klimas talks about international funding in the context of a "think tank" meeting she attended with representatives of "Japanese pharma" who showed considerable interest in the work she was doing. So, those could be two different sources of funding, I suppose.
