A research team led from the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania has been awarded $3 million to establish the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Centre of Research Excellence.
This large-scale collaboration between MS researchers, consumers, advocacy and resource organisations and industry will address the MS community's number one research priority: to identify and evaluate brain protection and repair treatments for progressive MS.
Professor Kaylene Young, neuroscientist and MS Centre of Research Excellence chief investigator (CI), said "Our vision is to make MS a disease without disability."
The Centre aims to prevent disability accrual in people with MS and will use the National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) funding to enable their discovery and clinical translation of drugs to target the genes and brain cells that drive progressive disease. The Centre will simultaneously identify and validate biomarkers that track with disease progression.
The team will take a multidisciplinary approach, combining neuroscience and biotechnology research with large scale gene, protein and lipid studies to define what happens in the central nervous system of people with progressive MS. The work will enable biotechnology, drug development and clinical trials that will ensure translation of knowledge into improving health outcomes of individuals with MS.
"We will systematically identify and short list drugs with the potential to combat the mechanisms of progressive MS. We will work with our biotechnology and clinical trial partners to fast-track potential drugs to clinical evaluation," Professor Young said.
Consumers are at the heart of the MS Centre of Research Excellence, with its CI and associate investigator (AI) teams including people who live with MS.
Chris Gumley, a consumer CI, said "It's a privilege to contribute my lived experience of MS to a team striving for shared goals: enhancing understanding of MS, improving quality of life through research discoveries, and ultimately striving to find a cure for current and future generations."
"As a consumer, being involved and seeing all the research going on gives me hope," Ms Gumley said.
The MS Centre of Research Excellence will foster collaboration between researchers from the MS Research Flagship at Menzies and the University of Queensland, University of Melbourne, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Griffith University, University College London, plus strategic partnerships with the MS community, Novoroo Bioscience Pty Ltd, MS Australia, and MStranslate.
This will enliven the already thriving interdisciplinary MS researcher community at Menzies and build capacity for translational research leadership now and into the future.
Menzies Director Professor Tracey Dickson said "At Menzies we are already deeply committed to training the next generation of MS researchers and research leaders."
"The MS Centre of Research Excellence will provide further opportunities for advanced training, development, leadership and mentoring programs and will support MS research innovation," Professor Dickson said.
The MS Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) is one of 20 centres across Australia funded from the NHMRC CRE scheme's investment of $60 million in 2024. This funding will support researchers to pursue collaborative research that aims to improve health outcomes by translating health and medical research into policy and/or practice.
Notes:
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex autoimmune and neurodegenerative condition. Current MS disease modifying therapies reduce the ability of immune cells to invade the central nervous system (CNS), but do not prevent or reverse CNS damage. More than 70% of people diagnosed with MS experience progressive neurodegeneration that is associated with disability accrual over time. The MS community has identified neuroprotective or reparative treatments as its number one research priority.
