CCS researchers win MS Australia grant for multiple sclerosis research

L-R: CCS's Associate Professor Anneke van der Walt, Dr Yi Chao Foong, 

Dr Daniel Merlo, Dr Steven Petratos,  and BDI's Dr Hugh Reid

MS Australia will make an intensive bid to urgently find ways to repair nerve fibres and their protective covering (myelin), which are damaged in people with progressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). The bid will launch this year thanks to $6.9 million in new research grants announced 15 February (see their research snapshot and detail of all grants).

This is the largest research investment in MS Australia’s 50-year history, taking the total amount provided for local investigator-led scientific projects in MS to $54 million since the organisation began in 1972.

Monash University researchers received a total of $754,000 in MS Australia’s 2022 round of funding. They included four Central Clinical School (CCS) researchers and one Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) researcher. Congratulations to CCS's Associate Professor Anneke van der Walt, Dr Yi Chao Foong, Dr Daniel Merlo, Dr Steven Petratos,  and BDI's Dr Hugh Reid!

MS Australia incubator grant for investigating effect of pregnancy on MS onset

L-R: Dr Michael Zhong, Ms Maria (Pia) Campagna and Dr Vilija
Jokubaitis have won an MS Australia incubator grant

Congratulations to Dr Michael Zhong, Dr Vilija Jokubaitis and Ms Maria (Pia) Campagna on the award of an incubator grant of $25,000 from MS Australia for their research project, 'The effect of foetal cells in maternal blood on MS during pregnancy'. Dr Zhong is a Neuroimmunology Fellow at the Alfred, and both he and Ms Campagna are PhD students in Dr Vilija Jokubaitis's group. Dr Zhong is leading the research, and Ms Campagna and Dr Jokubaitis are co-investigators.

From their MS Australia project description, they write: