One of the great drivers of progress in MS research, treatment and care is the increasingly global approach taken by the MS communities across the world.
Whether its researchers, people living with MS, medical and healthcare professionals, MS societies or policy makers, we are working more closely and collaborating on more common priorities than ever before.
Evidence of this has emerged on several fronts in the past few weeks. The new McDonald diagnostic criteria has been published, which will lead to faster diagnosis and faster access to life-changing medications.
The world’s largest MS research conference – ECTRIMS – has just been held in Barcelona, with new research – much of it conducted across multiple nations – giving hope for new generations of disease modifying treatments, including BTK Inhibitors and CAR T-Cell therapies, as well as new approaches to improve well-being and symptom management. (For more on ECTRIMs25, listen to our latest Raw Nerve podcast).
The MS International Federation has also held its annual meetings, bringing together the world’s MS societies to work together on key themes including faster diagnosis, improving access to essential medicines, building capacity and sharing best practice in fundraising.
The pioneering International Progressive MS Alliance (IPMSA) has also just held its major annual meeting, where leading MS organisations, including MS Australia, work together to fund critical research for experimental medicines, well-being and critical research infrastructure such as the new Clinical and Image Data Resource (CIDR), which makes available for researchers some 72,000 MRI scans as well as data from 200,000 clinical visits by more than 13,500 people living with MS.
MS Australia works closely with the MSIF and IPMSA but also collaborates with the MS Society UK through our joint PLATYPUS/OCTOPUS clinical trials, with MS Canada through the new MS prevention initiative and has ongoing engagement on multiple issues with the National MS Society (USA), the Italian MS Society – a major contributor to MS research – and many others.
We are also working with MSIF to see if we can establish a regional group that would encourage and promote even greater collaboration between established and emerging MS organisations across the Asia-Pacific region.
Much of this closer working relationship – particularly that focused on research – has been enabled through important documents such as Pathways to Cures, which is driving collaboration and alignment of our research programs.
By working together, we are going further and faster down the pathways to cures than we possibly could by working in isolation.
