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 active Centers are grouped below by general areas of focus.
Centers Focused on Nervous System Repair
Joel Levine, PhD (SUNY, Stony Brook) and colleagues are characterizing resident cells in the brain capable of repairing myelin and developing techniques and molecules to induce them to rebuild damaged tissues in MS and restore function.
James Salzer, MD, PhD (New York University) and colleagues are investigating mechanisms that are critical for the initial events of immune-mediated myelin damage in MS and clarifying the sources of cells that might repair such damage to rebuild the nervous system.
Jeffery D. Kocsis, PhD (Yale University) leads a team testing ways, such as cell transplantation, to protect and repair central nervous system tissue.
Searching for New Therapies
Lloyd Kasper, MD (Dartmouth Medical School) is leading a group studying the role of regulatory T cells in MS and their potential for turning off the immune attack, with the ultimate goal of conducting clinical trials.
Lawrence Steinman, MD (Stanford University) and his group are using novel technology to study the immune attack in MS on a broad scale to identify targets for therapies.
Benjamin M. Segal, MD (University of Michigan) and colleagues are developing therapeutic vaccines and novel immune-modulating agents to improve the treatment of MS and advance nervous tissue repair.
Understanding MS Damage and How to Stop It
Dennis Bourdette, MD (Oregon Health & Science University) and colleagues are seeking to understand MS damage that leads to progressive disability.
Paula Dore-Duffy, PhD (Wayne State University) and colleagues are exploring changes in the brain and spinal cord in MS that may hold clues to its destructive nature and provide better ways to predict and track the disease.
Rhonda Voskuhl, MD (University of California, Los Angeles) and her team are characterizing the nerve-fiber damage that occurs in MS and developing candidate molecules to protect brain tissue.
Jorge R. Oksenberg, PhD (University of California, San Francisco) and colleagues are seeking molecules that may be used as markers to predict MS progression.
Jenny P-Y Ting, PhD (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is heading a team of basic and clinical researchers exploring steps leading to injury to the central nervous system in MS and new strategies to stop the disease.