Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease resulting in damage to the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. As a demyelinating disease, MS disrupts the nervous system's ability to transmit signals, resulting in a range of signs and symptoms, including physical, mental, and sometimes psychiatric problems. Symptoms include double vision, vision loss, eye pain, muscle weakness, and loss of sensation or coordination. MS takes several forms, with new symptoms either occurring in isolated attacks or building up over time. In relapsing forms of MS symptoms may disappear completely between attacks, although some permanent neurological problems often remain, especially as the disease advances. In progressive forms of MS, bodily function slowly deteriorates once symptoms manifest and will steadily worsen if left untreated.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It conducts and funds research on brain and nervous system disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The mission of NINDS is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world". NINDS has established two major branches for research: an extramural branch that funds studies outside the NIH, and an intramural branch that funds research inside the NIH. Most of NINDS' budget goes to fund extramural research. NINDS' basic science research focuses on studies of the fundamental biology of the brain and nervous system, genetics, neurodegeneration, learning and memory, motor control, brain repair, and synapses. NINDS also funds clinical research related to diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system, e.g. AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury.
Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, sometimes experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE), is an animal model of brain inflammation. It is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS). It is mostly used with rodents and is widely studied as an animal model of the human CNS demyelinating diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS) and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). EAE is also the prototype for T-cell-mediated autoimmune disease in general.
John Quinn Trojanowski was an American academic research neuroscientist specializing in neurodegeneration. He and his partner, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, MBA, Ph.D., are noted for identifying the roles of three proteins in neurodegenerative diseases: tau in Alzheimer's disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease, and TDP-43 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal degeneration.
Martin A. Samuels was an American physician, neurologist and medical educator whose unique teaching style and contributions, accessible to a wide audience, were widely known and celebrated. He wrote and spoke on the relationships between neurology and the rest of medicine, and linked the nervous system with cardiac function, highlighting the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease.
Stephen L. Hauser is a professor of the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) specializing in immune mechanisms and multiple sclerosis (MS). He has contributed to the establishment of consortia that have identified more than 50 gene variants that contribute to MS risk.
Foralumab (TZLS-401), being researched by Tiziana Life Sciences) is a fully human monoclonal antibody that binds to CD3 epsilon of the T cell receptor-CD3 complex. It is currently being studied in a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, multicenter dose-ranging study in a nasal formulation in patients with non-active secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS).
David A. Hafler is an American neurologist. He is the Edgerly Professor and chairman of the department of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, where he works on immunity, genetics, and multiple sclerosis. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Rohit Bakshi is the Jack, Sadie and David Breakstone Professor of Neurology and Radiology at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is director of the Laboratory for Neuroimaging Research at the Brigham Multiple Sclerosis Center. Since 2015, he is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroimaging.
Several biomarkers for diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, disease evolution and response to medication are under research. While most of them are still under research, there are some of them already well stablished:
Anne Cross is an American neurologist and neuroimmunologist and the Section Head of Neuroimmunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Cross holds the Manny and Rosalyn Rosenthal–Dr. John L. Trotter Endowed Chair in Neuroimmunology at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and co-directs the John L Trotter Multiple Sclerosis Clinic at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Cross is a leader in the field of neuroimmunology and was the first to discover the role of B cells in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) in animals and then in humans. Cross now develops novel imaging techniques to observe inflammation and demyelination in the central nervous systems of MS patients for diagnosis and disease management.
Lawrence Steinman is an American neurologist, neuroimmunologist and an academic. He is a Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics at Stanford University.
Francisco J. Quintana is an Argentinean-American immunologist and neuroscientist, and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. His lab studies interactions between the immune system and nervous system. He is best known for his work on the regulation of inflammation by astrocytes, and by the study of the role of the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor in the regulation of the immune response by pollutants, the microbial flora and metabolism. Dr. Quintana's research has implications for our understanding of the pathology of multiple inflammatory disorders including multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes and Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and also brain tumors and infectious diseases. His work has also led to the development of novel therapeutic interventions, and novel techniques for the investigation of regulatory mechanisms involved in the control of inflammation, including RABID-seq, FIND-seq and SPEAC-seq.
Dennis J. Selkoe is an American physician (neurologist) known for his research into the molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease. In 1985 he became Co-Director of the Center for Neurological Diseases and from 1990, Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurological Diseases at Harvard Medical School. He is also a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Carmela R. Abraham is an American neuroscientist who focuses on the study of Alzheimer's disease.
Alan J. Thompson is Dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at UCL; Pro-Provost for London at UCL; Garfield Weston Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurorehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. He is also a consultant neurologist at the University College London NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust working at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. He is Editor-in-Chief for Multiple Sclerosis Journal.
Vijay K. Kuchroo is an Indian-American immunologist and serial entrepreneur. He is the Samuel L. Wasserstrom chair of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is also the director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
Philip Laurence De Jager is the Weil-Granat Professor of Neurology in The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain and the Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative, both at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Center for Translational and Computational Neuroimmunology and the Multiple Sclerosis Center, the deputy director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain, and the chief of the Division of Neuroimmunology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is noted for his research on the genetics of multiple sclerosis, for which he was awarded the Barancik Prize for Innovation in Multiple Sclerosis from the National MS Society in 2014. He was elected to the Association of American Physicians in 2021.
Burkhard Becher is a German immunologist, biomedical researcher and academic. He is a Professor and Chair of the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich.
Brenda Banwell is Chief of the Division of Neurology and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Center, and Professor of Neurology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and holder of the Grace R. Loeb Endowed Chair in Neurosciences. She also holds the title of Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
