Toronto, Aug 13 - Canadian researchers have successfully reversed multiple sclerosis in rodents, spelling hope for humans.

Multiple sclerosis is an auto-immune disease in which the body's own immune response attacks the central nervous system, leading to progressive physical and mental deterioration.

Led by Jacques Galipeau, researchers at the Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and the McGill University in Montreal, in an experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis, managed to completely reverse the auto-immune disorder in mice.

Calling the new treatment GIFT15, the researchers said it might put multiple sclerosis in humans into remission by suppressing the immune response.

The new treatment might also be effective against other auto-immune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, and could also control immune responses in organ transplant patients, a university statement said Wednesday.

The researchers said unlike earlier immune-suppressing therapies that rely on chemical pharmaceuticals, this new approach is 'a personalised form of cellular therapy which utilises the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way'.

The new treatment, or GIFT15, involves two proteins, GSM-CSF and interleukin-15, fused together artificially in the lab.

Under normal circumstances, the individual proteins act to stimulate the immune system, but when they are fused, the equation reverses itself.

'You know those mythical animals that have the head of an eagle and the body of a lion.