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Inflammatory neuropathies are a group of rare conditions in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nerves, causing severe weakness, in some cases, long-term disability and life-threatening complications.
Treatments can be effective, but in chronic inflammatory neuropathies the benefits often diminish over time and many patients then develop progressive and increasingly irreversible nerve damage.
Professor Simon Rinaldi leads the University of Oxford’s programme of research which aims to understand how the immune system damages nerves and how this process can be prevented across a broad range of conditions, including Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), autoimmune nodopathies and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN). The programme brings together patient samples, laboratory models and clinical data to improve diagnosis and develop more effective treatments.
Postdoctoral researcher Dr Nicolas Dubuisson’s research centres on MMN, studying why the immune system produces harmful antibodies which target motor nerves, leading to progressive muscle weakness and wasting. Identifying the exact immune cells responsible could lead to more effective, long lasting, and even curative, treatments.
Dr Dubuisson explains
“Our goal is to understand exactly what goes wrong in the immune system so we can stop nerve damage at its source rather than just managing symptoms.”
New funding and a new collaboration
Work to date would not have been possible without the support of the Royal Medical Academy of Belgium, the Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, the Hospital Saint Luc Foundation, the Peripheral Nerve Society (PNS) and the GBS CIDP Foundation.
A major new grant from the GBS|CIDP Foundation International will provide $600,000 USD over three years from September 2026 to support the project, “Decoding and monitoring the immunology of multifocal motor neuropathy to guide next generation disease modifying therapies.”
This funding will enable the team to continue and expand their understanding of the immune mechanisms driving MMN, building on their earlier findings and analysing patient samples in greater depth. Greater understanding could lead to more accurate diagnosis, better monitoring and more effective treatments with fewer side effects.
Recruitment of a postdoctoral researcher who will work in Oxford before helping to establish a new peripheral nerve immunology laboratory at UCLouvain in Brussels will also strengthen international collaboration between the two institutions.
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Dr Nicolas Dubuisson, Clive Philips and Professor Simon Rinaldi
No one rides alone
The team’s research also features in the forthcoming documentary No One Rides Alone, released in the UK on Rare Disease Day, The film follows MMN patient Clive Phillips and fellow veterans as they cycle the 1955 Tour de France route to raise awareness of the condition and raise funds for the GBS|CIDP Foundation International MMN Research Fund.
Clive and the production team visited Professor Rinaldi’s Oxford laboratory in summer 2025 to interview the team and see first-hand how their fundraising is supporting research into the causes of MMN.
Reflecting on the visit, Clive said:
“The visit gave me incredible insights into the research Simon, Nicolas and the team are doing. The work itself and the care and passion with which it is undertaken are remarkable.”
Tickets are available now for screenings of No One Rides Alone in selected cinemas across the UK, including the Phoenix Picturehouse in Oxford on 18 March.
A proportion of the profits from each screening will go to support Multifocal Motor Neuropathy research.