This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Hi all,

As you may be aware from my previous posts, I am a multiple sclerosis researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. However, for the past 5 and a half years, I have also been working as a co-founder of MStranslate - a science communication platform that is designed to make research into multiple sclerosis easier to understand and more accessible for people living with MS.

I'm pleased to announce that we have recently launched a new and exciting initiative, which aims to directly support research into multiple sclerosis. Below is a link to the video where I describe our motivations for this approach.



Essentially, it has come from listening to feedback from our community that has consistently told us that they would like to be more involved in determining the types of research projects that get funded. As well as this, it is our way of trying to help overcome the critical lack of funding that researchers are facing at the moment. We believe this is really important to ensure that high-quality research into multiple sclerosis continues! I'll be updating this thread with more information, but would love to hear any feedback that you have! I hope you are all as excited about this new initiative as we are!!

What type(s) of research projects are you supporting?

Hi ElliotB,

Thanks for your interest. The hope is that we will be supporting a variety of research projects across a number of different interest areas. We have a lot of other researchers who are very interested in participating and we hope to have them onboard across 2018. The only requirements from our end is that the research is currently unfunded, it is a high-quality study and attempts to answer a question that will benefit the MS community. We also will only work with groups that commit to providing regular updates and information about the project to the community, so that people are getting as much information as possible to decide if they would like to support the research.

We have launched the first study that we will be providing information on and hoping to help get funded on our website. You can access it via the following link:

http://www.mstranslate.com.au/collabora ... -research/

There will be lots more information about this project being provided over the coming months through video pieces with the researchers involved, as well as Facebook Live interviews to allow the MS community to directly ask them questions about this study. Essentially, this study is aiming to determine whether it is better to use an escalation approach to MS treatments or whether the most effective treatment should be given first (or if different groups of people will benefit from one or the other).

Happy to answer any other questions that you may have!