This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I have no idea, but i think it naive not to think the current climate will not have any effect on MS treatments. I am thinking people will be more restrained with investing in medical treatments in the pipeline that MAY turn out big later.

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Cure,

You are right that things are getting tight. Our cancer institute was getting $10 million a year from the state govt but we got cut off cold turkey this year. The sports stadiums are still being funded though. We are scrambling to find new funding sources. I think we'll do okay, just have to put our growth plans off for a couple of years.

A silver lining though, our management is going to be more lenient as to what funding grants we try for. In the past we were only supposed to go for cancer-related grants. Now, I can go for lupus and MS grants. My ideas are relevant for autoimmune diseases, breast & ovarian cancers, and cancer-related autoimmunity that can arise during treatment. I can put in justification for the research towards all of these. I just found out this week that I did not get funded for a breast cancer grant. I had a very good rating on it but there just wasn't enough funds available to fund all the very good to excellent grants. They (Dept of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program) liked the experimental innovations in the grant but thought that drug discovery on polyamines (my main interest) had been studied enough relative to cancer. I disagree but that's life. So I will take the ideas and peddle them elsewhere. I think I can be more convincing towards autoimmune research so I will look for funding there.

Another silver lining, since most people's retirement funds are disappearing, a lot of us will have to work longer and put off retirement. Most good researchers don't want to retire anyway.

Wesley