AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BioMedWire Editorial Coverage: Today's multiple sclerosis treatments can slow down disease progression, but none of them halt it outright, and none give back the function patients have already lost. Close to a million people in the United States, and nearly 2.9 million worldwide, live with that reality, watching a condition that steadily chips away at mobility, eyesight and basic physical control. That gap in treatment options just picked up a serious new contender. Quantum BioPharma Ltd. (NASDAQ: QNTM) (profile) has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) clearance to launch a phase 2 trial of Lucid-MS, a patented, first-in-class candidate designed not to calm the immune system but to shield, and potentially rebuild, the myelin sheath itself. The clearance sets up what would be the first time in history that a drug built on this exact mechanism gets tested in people living with MS, a milestone significant enough that it has already drawn a fresh buy rating from Wall Street analysts. That momentum puts Quantum BioPharma squarely among a group of leading pharma companies, including Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS), Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK), TG Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: TGTX) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY), that are focused on treating serious diseases and areas of major unmet medical need. Research puts the number of Americans living with MS at roughly one million, with about 2.9 million affected worldwide. The FDA's sign-off on Quantum BioPharma's Investigational New Drug (“IND”) application has created an uncommon moment in MS research.Beyond the phase 2 drug trial itself, Quantum BioPharma has spent over a year working on a separate research collaboration alongside scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (“MGH”) and Harvard Medical School.Lucid-MS, sometimes referred to by its research code, Lucid-21-302, approaches MS progression from an entirely different angle than most treatments on the market.Clinical progress doesn't just matter to patients; it moves stock prices too, and Quantum BioPharma has recently found itself on Wall Street's radar. Click here to view the custom infographic of the Quantum BioPharma editorial. When a Disease Steals Physical Independence Research puts the number of Americans living with MS at roughly one million, with about 2.9 million affected worldwide. The condition develops when a person's immune system turns on myelin, the protective sheath wrapped around nerve fibers that lets the brain communicate with the rest of the body. Diagnosis typically comes in a person's 20s or 30s, and women are affected at roughly twice the rate of men. Day-to-day life with MS often means bracing for an unpredictable decline in physical ability. Fatigue, vision problems, numbness and trouble with balance and coordination are common symptoms. As the disease progresses, many patients gradually lose fine motor skills, the ability to walk unaided, and even control over bladder and bowel function. On top of that, plenty of people with MS end up juggling a complicated combination of medications just to manage symptoms alongside their primary treatment, one more daily burden layered onto the disease itself. Almost every MS drug approved today works by dialing down or adjusting the immune system rather than directly shielding nerve tissue. Interferons, glatiramer acetate and newer monoclonal antibodies can cut down how often relapses happen, and research reports that these drugs genuinely help many patients. However, that same research also points to real limitations: Roughly one-half of patients on injectable immune-modulating therapies quit taking them within their first year, and the progressive forms of MS remain particularly stubborn to treat. Even the largest drugmakers haven't cracked this problem. Major pharmaceutical companies have pushed new MS candidates through late-stage trials in recent years, only to land mixed or disappointing outcomes, including recent setbacks across the wider field of myelin repair research. That track record shows just how hard it still is to build a therapy that changes the actual course of the disease rather than just easing its symptoms. For patients, it means the wait continues for something that restores what's been lost, not just something that slows the losing. Testing an Entirely New Mechanism The FDA's sign-off on Quantum BioPharma's Investigational New Drug (“IND”) application has created an uncommon moment in MS research. Quantum BioPharma’s IND submission totaled roughly 15,000 pages and included a full package of pharmacology, toxicology and manufacturing data. With clearance now in hand, the company can move straight into a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial testing Lucid-MS in people living with MS. What makes this moment genuinely historic is that the underlying mechanism has never been tested with MS patients before. Lucid-MS is a novel, first-in-class, non-covalent inhibitor of an enzyme called peptidyl arginine deiminase 2 (“PAD2”). It works by targeting demyelination directly instead of suppressing the immune system. No MS therapy currently approved by the FDA has shown it can prevent or reverse demyelination, and the wider field of remyelinating drug candidates has run into consistent obstacles. Quantum BioPharma's own chief executive described the clearance as a defining moment for the company. “FDA clearance to proceed with our Lucid-MS phase 2 trial is a transformative moment for Quantum and the result of years of dedicated scientific research,” said Zeeshan Saeed. Quantum’s SEC filing frames the trial against a global MS therapeutics market projected to reach roughly $38.62 billion by 2030. Should Lucid-MS produce in human patients what it's already shown in preclinical models, the significance would reach beyond one company's pipeline. It would mark the first time a candidate aimed squarely at demyelination instead of the immune system broadly has indicated in controlled human testing that it might help patients regain physical function they'd already lost. That would put it in a meaningfully different category of MS treatment than anything now available. A Parallel Push to See Myelin Damage Beyond the phase 2 drug trial itself, Quantum BioPharma has spent over a year working on a separate research collaboration alongside scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (“MGH”) and Harvard Medical School. This effort tackles a different piece of the puzzle entirely, figuring out how to visualize demyelination as it’s actually occurring inside a living patient’s brain rather than inferring it indirectly. A novel PET imaging tracer, [¹⁸F]3F4AP, sits at the heart of that work. Dr. Pedro Brugarolas, a radiology investigator at MGH and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, led development of the tracer. In addition, Dr. Eric Klawiter, who heads MGH's Multiple Sclerosis and Neuromyelitis Optica Unit and holds an associate professorship in Neurology at Harvard, is serving alongside him as co-investigator. The team scanned its first MS patient in June 2025 using a recently installed combined PET-MR scanner at MGH, a setup that lets researchers gather PET and MRI readings at once with sharper resolution than either method alone would provide. Peer-reviewed results followed just two months later, in August 2025. A study published in the “European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging,” backed by National Institutes of Health funding, found that [¹⁸F]3F4AP performed well for brain imaging and picked up variations across lesions that standard MRI scans missed entirely. By May 2026, the research hit an important midpoint checkpoint, with Brugarolas pointing out that being able to directly measure demyelinated lesions where axons remain intact addresses a real gap in how MS is currently studied. Assuming this imaging method holds up through further validation, it could eventually offer scientists a much more precise, measurable way to track both myelin damage and myelin repair, something MRI alone doesn't currently deliver. The significance extends past Quantum BioPharma's own potential product line: A trustworthy biomarker for demyelination would be useful for evaluating essentially any drug candidate targeting myelin protection or repair, not only Lucid-MS. At this stage, the imaging research and the phase 2 drug trial remain two distinct, simultaneous efforts. Quantum BioPharma has also brought on a globally active contract research organization with a background in CNS and MS studies to help manage site selection and early setup work for the drug trial. How Lucid-MS Is Designed to Work Lucid-MS, sometimes referred to by its research code, Lucid-21-302, approaches MS progression from an entirely different angle than most treatments on the market. Instead of zeroing in on the immune system, the compound works by acting on PAD2, an enzyme present in the central nervous system that drives citrullination, a chemical modification that alters myelin proteins. Scientists believe this citrullination process plays a direct role in myelin breakdown, which is why blocking PAD2 activity offers a plausible route to stopping disease progression at its origin rather than managing its downstream effects. This is a patented, novel chemical compound that researchers have been investigating for more than a decade, with supporting studies appearing in respected peer-reviewed publications, such as the “Journal of Medicinal Chemistry” and the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” According to the company, testing in preclinical animal models showed that Lucid-MS sped up functional recovery, kept myelin intact, and limited axonal degradation, all achieved without touching the immune system, which sets its mechanism apart from virtually every MS drug currently available. This immune-sparing characteristic forms the foundation of the company's scientific argument. Since Lucid-MS isn't built to suppress immune function broadly, the intent is to sidestep the infection risks and other body-wide side effects often linked to immunosuppressive MS treatments, all while tackling demyelination directly, the process widely believed to underlie lasting disability. There's also a practical upside being explored: The compound is being developed with potential oral dosing in mind, using a relatively straightforward regimen that could give it a real edge in convenience over competitors requiring injections or infusions, assuming it clears later trial stages. Reaching this stage required Lucid-MS to first pass through phase 1 trials involving healthy volunteers, where the company says it demonstrated a solid safety profile and was well tolerated. Dr. Andrzej Chruscinski, who serves as Quantum's VP of Scientific and Clinical Affairs, has pointed to the IND submission as the product of years spent thoroughly documenting the compound's safety. Now that FDA clearance is secured, the phase 2 trial becomes the first real test of whether more than 10 years of laboratory research can translate into actual functional improvement for people living with progressive MS. Analysts Are Paying Attention Clinical progress doesn't just matter to patients; it moves stock prices too, and Quantum BioPharma has recently found itself on Wall Street's radar. Rodman & Renshaw initiated coverage of the company with a Buy rating alongside an $8 price target, characterizing Lucid-MS in its report as a potentially first-in-class, non-immunomodulatory small molecule targeting neurodegeneration and disability progression in progressive MS, a segment of the disease where treatment choices remain notably sparse. That $8 price target from Rodman & Renshaw stems from the firm's assessment of Quantum BioPharma's full development pipeline, with the newly cleared phase 2 program serving as its foundation. This coverage arrives after Kingswood Capital Partners had already issued unpaid coverage earlier on, setting a considerably higher $45 price target back in September 2025. That figure was built on a discounted cash flow model that assumed both phase 2 and phase 3 trials would succeed, with a commercial product launch targeted for 2029. For a company still in the clinical-stage of biopharmaceutical development, new analyst coverage carries real weight. It can signal that independent experts, who have no built-in incentive to sound bullish, looked at the underlying data and found enough there to back a formal recommendation. That kind of outside validation can be especially valuable for a small-cap company approaching a make-or-break trial, helping it maintain investor visibility and credibility through what is typically a lengthy, costly testing process. It also provides investors with something to weigh beyond the company's own press releases when they're sizing up the risk-reward balance of the phase 2 program. Put all of it together — the FDA clearance and upcoming phase 2 trial, the imaging partnership tied to Harvard and this fresh wave of analyst attention — and what emerges is a company steadily piecing together everything needed to put a genuinely novel MS treatment approach to the test. While Quantum BioPharma is still a clinical-stage operation, reaching this stage at all is rare. Lucid-MS now has clearance for its first real-world test in people with progressive MS, giving the company a legitimate opportunity to prove that directly targeting the myelin sheath can accomplish what decades of immune-focused approaches haven't. New Therapies Target Critical Unmet Needs Pharmaceutical innovation continues to advance across some of medicine’s most serious and difficult-to-treat diseases, as companies pursue new therapies, expanded indications and novel approaches for patients with limited treatment options. Recent regulatory and clinical developments spanning cancer, infectious disease, neurological and psychiatric conditions highlight the industry’s continued focus on translating scientific advances into treatments that could improve outcomes and address significant areas of unmet medical need. Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS) received key approval from the FDA for Pluvicto(R) in combination with an androgen receptor pathway inhibitor. The approval is for patients with prostate-specific membrane antigen-positive metastatic androgen pathway modulation-naive/sensitive prostate cancer, commonly known as metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. The approval is based on the phase 3 trial, which showed Pluvicto reduced the risk of progression or death by 28% when combined with standard of care (“SoC”) compared to SoC alone. Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) announced that the FDA has accepted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for ENFLONSIA(TM) (clesrovimab-cfor) to expand its indication. The expansion will include prevention of respiratory syncytial virus (“RSV”) lower respiratory tract disease in children under two years of age at increased risk for severe RSV disease through their second RSV season. The FDA has set a Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or target action, date of March 22, 2027. In July 2026, the European Medicines Agency accepted the application to expand marketing authorization for ENFLONSIA in the European Union for the same population. TG Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: TGTX) has initiated a phase 2 clinical trial evaluating BRIUMVI(R) (ublituximab-xiiy) in adults with treatment-resistant schizophrenia. The phase 2 study is an open-label trial designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of BRIUMVI in approximately 60 adults with schizophrenia who continue to experience significant symptoms despite receiving standard-of-care antipsychotic treatment. If successful, the study could expand the potential utility of BRIUMVI into a significant area of unmet medical need. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) released positive phase 2 results from the registrational QUINTESSENTIAL trial of arlocabtagene autoleucel (arlo-cel; BMS-986393). The trial was in adult patients with quadruple-class exposed relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma. Arlo-cel is a potential first-in-class autologous G protein-coupled receptor class C group 5 member D-directed CAR T cell therapy and potentially represents a differentiated approach for patients with heavily pretreated relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma. These developments reflect the breadth of work underway to improve treatment across complex diseases where better options remain urgently needed. From expanding access to established therapies to evaluating new indications and advancing next-generation treatment approaches, continued clinical and regulatory progress is creating new possibilities for patients while reinforcing the importance of innovation across the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. For more information, visit Quantum BioPharma Ltd. About BioMedWire BioMedWire (“BMW”) is a specialized communications platform with a focus on the latest developments in the Biotechnology (BioTech), Biomedical Sciences (BioMed) and Life Sciences sectors. 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