"These centers have the potential to increase MS research progress exponentially," says Stephen C. Reingold, PhD, the Society's Vice President of Research Programs. "They combine intensive laboratory studies with expansive clinical investigations, and have allowed us to attract not only MS experts, but high-caliber scientists from other areas as well."
The individual five-year, $825,000 Center Awards are not meant to pay for "bricks and mortar" laboratory facilities, but rather to allow for flexible spending by collaborating teams based at the same or separate institutions.
MS expert David A. Hafler, MD (Harvard Medical School, Boston), forged a Center team focused on genetic underpinnings of MS with human genome expert Eric Lander, PhD (MIT's Whitehead Institute, Boston), and Stephen Hauser, MD (University of California at San Francisco), who pioneered an MS genome scan study and an MS DNA Bank. They are using a new approach called haplotype mapping to search for genes that make people susceptible to developing MS, and are fusing information on genetics, clinical aspects of disease and profiles of immune activity.
If successful, this project would give scientists a roadmap to the cause of MS, as well as concrete targets for new therapies.
A second award-winning team, based at Washington University in St. Louis and led by neurologist/MS expert Anne H. Cross, MD, is applying a new magnetic resonance technology called DTI (diffusion tensor MR imaging) to develop better ways of detecting MS damage to the brain and spinal cord. Dr. Cross and Sheng-Kwei Song, PhD, have enlisted Joseph J. H. Ackerman, PhD, a leader in the application of MR technology to living systems, and John H. Russell, PhD, who focuses on mechanisms of immune damage and regulation in disease.
Their goal is to create DTI profiles of different types and combinations of tissue damage seen in MS, including inflammation, damage and repair of myelin insulation, and damage to nerve fibers. Ultimately, these experiments will open a new window to view the types and amount of tissue damage and recovery in persons with MS, which would greatly improve the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of new therapies.
The third Center Award team, led by Charles D. Stiles, PhD (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston), is focusing on possible strategies for repairing the damage to myelin that occurs during the immune attack in MS. While investigating brain cancer, Stiles and Dana-Farber colleague David Rowitch, MD, PhD, identified "Olig" genes that instruct immature brain cells to become mature cells capable of making nerve-insulating myelin. They have teamed up with MS experts at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, New York) including neuropathologist Cedric Raine, PhD, DSc, neuroimmunologist Celia F. Brosnan, PhD, and molecular immunologist Gareth John, PhD.
The team is testing the ability of Olig genes to stimulate myelin repair, and, using the latest microarray technology, examining human tissue samples to determine the genes targeted by Olig genes during myelin repair. These might point up molecular targets for new MS treatment approaches that would stimulate tissue repair.
The National MS Society plans to create additional Collaborative MS Research Centers each year to foster cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques that will speed the search for a cure.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease of the central nervous system. It is devastating because it strikes during the younger adult years, and slowly steals physical functioning in unpredictable ways. MS affects 400,000 people in the U.S.
For more information about the new Collaborative MS Research Centers, go to our Web site: nationalmssociety.org and click on Research > Current Funded Research. For further information about MS, or to contact your local National MS Society chapter for information about community programs and activities, call the toll-free MS information line at 1-800-FIGHT MS, e-mail info@nmss.org.