The National MS Society fosters large-scale coalitions between MS experts and those from other fields and diseases to make rapid and meaningful progress.
- We engage thought leaders to identify new opportunities and help set priorities and to serve as peer reviewers and advisors. Our centralized peer review and funding process helps us avoid geographic and political biases, and identify the best research projects in which to strategically invest our resources.
- We fostered the creation of the Progressive MS Alliance, an international coalition working together to connect resources and experts around the world to find the answers and develop the solutions to end progressive MS.
- We leverage support from other organizations, agencies and industry to propel MS research.
- For example, the Society-led MS Outcome Assessments Consortium -- working toward creating a robust and FDA/EMA-approved clinical outcome measure for MS clinical trials -- is leveraging data from clinical trials that took $2 billion to generate.
- We have convened over 50 international workshops and meetings over the past 40 years, playing a pivotal role in fostering collaborations and moving knowledge forward in critical areas. Many of these workshops have been springboards for crucial leaps forward in research approaches to MS.
Another way we have fostered collaboration is through our Collaborative MS Research Center Awards, which provided flexible funding for intensive laboratory studies combined with expansive clinical investigations. Bringing together scientists and physicians from diverse fields fostered cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques to propel progress. These awards provided the seed funding that launched the International MS Genetic Consortium and the International MS Microbiome Study.