i'm bernard gorman and i'm from st albans in hertfordshire. i was diagnosed in 2006 with ms. i'm at the cambridge center for myelin repair, following a revolutionary breakthrough made lastyear which could transform the lives of people with ms around the globe. i'm here today to findout more about this project the cambridge centre for myelin repair is a consortium of scientists and clinicians withexpertise in brain repair stem cells and multiple sclerosis.
at present there is nothing that can be given to an individual affected withms that helps repair the damage and that'sreally the unmet need that we're aiming to fill. in 2010 you made an exciting discovery that made news headlines can you tellme more about that please? so this was a discovery that we madeusing funds that had provided by the mssociety. what we're trying to do in myelin repair is made the brain's stem cells
generate the cells that can make newmyelin which wraps around the nerve fiber and restores the structure of the nerve fiber with its correct myelin sheath, and what we were able to do is to identify a mechanism by which the brain's stem cells are able to generate the cells that are lost in multiple sclerosis. having identified thatmechanism we're now in a position to try and device drugs which make that process work much more efficiently than it normally does. we're very much hoping this will bea treatment for the progressive phase of the disease. so all of the treatments that are currentlyvery effective for ms are really suppressing the immune system
which is causing the damage and they're particularly effective in the early relapsingremitting phase of the disease but all of those therapies really becomeineffective when an individual has the progressivephase. there's every reason to believe that if we can come up with therapies that help put myelin sheaths back on nerve fibers, then this should be a means of at least slowing the progressive phase and at best reversing the progressive phase. what do you hope will happen in the future? well our hope is that ultimately we will be able to provide
the multiple sclerosis community withsafe and effective drugs that regenerate myelin or repair the damage that is taking place in multiple sclerosis. we have made some significant progress in the last few years but there is still much more work to be done we're in a position now, we believe, to really begin to change the lives of people affected with multiple sclerosis - the millions of people with multiplesclerosis around the globe. you mentioned the ms society's funding earlier. how much will this next phase of the project cost?
well unfortunately bio-medical researchof this nature doesn't come cheaply in fact as you move towards the clinic itgets ever more expensive so what we've asked the ms society for is2.1 million pounds to take the cambridge myelin repair component ofthis board program into the next phase of its development. we're beginning to start to organize thevery first clinical trials which will take place in thenext few years but this is really just dipping our toein the water, the ultimate objective of coming up withwidely used, safe and effective re-myelination therapies
is going to take place with a muchlonger time frame and ten to fifteen years is a more realistic idea of how long thiswill take us to achieve. it's been really great to visitthe cambridge centre for myelin repair today there's some great work being carried out here in terms of the break-throughs that have been made so far. it's very encouraging to see that the ms society has provided funding for this work so far. if we can get enough donations to continue to fund this project in ten to fifteen years they might not just be giving hope to
people with ms, but rather find a treatment which can help to halt or even reverse the damage that's caused by ms.
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