Renewed funding for the MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research will support attempts to develop life-changing treatments for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Image The MS Society has announced renewed funding for the Edinburgh Centre for MS Research with a grant of £1.85M to fund the Centre for the next five years.The sister centre in Cambridge will also receive the same renewed funding.Progressive illnessMore than 130,000 people live with MS in the UK. The condition affects the brain and spinal cord and can lead to vision, movement and cognitive problems. There are no treatment options to stop or significantly slow so-called progressive symptoms, which can lead to long-term disability and loss of independence in day-to-day tasks.Research aimsProfessor Siddharthan Chandran will co-lead the work alongside Professors David Lyons, Anna Williams and Adam Waldman.To give people with progressive MS the very best chance of finding a beneficial medicine, and fast, research within the Centre is focused on three areas:understanding more about neurodegeneration in progressive MScreating a drug discovery pipeline involving tests to screen drugs that may prevent neurodegenerationimproving the ways we can use brain imaging in people with MS, to measure neurodegeneration and test the effectiveness of drugs in clinical trials This pivotal investment from the MS Society will allow us to lead vital work in the study of nerve damage, which causes long-term disability in people living with MS. We'll be developing new ways to measure it, identifying new targets for neuroprotective drugs, and testing out the most promising in the lab. Our ultimate goal is that five years from now we'll have substantially improved our understanding, and hopefully be beginning to translate this into new treatments that slow, stop or even reverse disability progression in MS. Professor Siddharthan Chandran MacDonald Professor of Neurology & Director of Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences It is very exciting to have the MS Society UK Edinburgh Research Centre here at the University of Edinburgh co-directed by Profs Siddharthan Chandran, David Lyons, Adam Waldman and myself. We have three parts to our project plan – first to understand more about neurodegeneration in progressive MS, second to screen drugs to prevent neurodegeneration in a drug discovery pipeline and third to find better imaging measures of neurodegeneration in people with MS, so that it will be easier to see if these drugs work. We are looking forward to working with the MS Society UK and their other centre at the University of Cambridge to get treatments to people with progressive MS. Professor Anna Williams Professor of Regenerative Neurology Related links MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research webpageAnnouncement on MS Society websiteProf Siddharthan Chandran's profileProf David Lyons' profileProf Anna Williams' profileProf Adam Waldman's profile Publication date 19 Feb, 2021
