If two heads are better than one, what about four, six or 10? The National MS Society fosters large-scale coalitions between MS experts and those from other fields and diseases to make rapid and meaningful progress. One way is through our Collaborative MS Research Center Awards, providing flexible funding for intensive laboratory studies combined with expansive clinical investigations. Bringing together scientists and physicians from diverse fields fosters cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques to propel progress.
These five-year awards provide flexible funding for expert scientists and clinicians from a variety of fields to team up on promising avenues of MS research. The current awards are listed below, according to whether they are doing research that will STOP MS in its tracks; research that will RESTORE what’s been lost; or research that will END MS forever.
STOP
Ettie (Tika) Benveniste, PhD (University of Alabama) and colleagues are developing and evaluating novel immune system-modulating therapies for MS that can turn off immune attacks and protect nerve tissues.
RESTORE
Moses Rodriguez, MD (Mayo Clinic and Foundation) and colleagues are xploring the molecular signals that might stimulate or inhibit repair processes in MS, for clues to developing therapeutic strategies to promote repair.
Thomas E. Lane, PhD (University of California, Irvine) is leading his team in a multifaceted effort to explore cell replacement strategies for repairing damage in MS.
Wendy Macklin, PhD (University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver) is exploring brain cell interactions to shed new light on how damage occurs in MS and how to reverse the process to restore function to people with MS.
END
David Hafler, MD (Yale University) and colleagues are applying novel technologies to understand how newly identified MS risk genes alter biological mechanisms that lead to susceptibility to the disease.