My cat is named after an Aztec god. Found on the side of the road near the US/Mexico border we named him Zontli, for Zacatzontli the Aztec god of the day road. His personality certainly matches his namesake.

The potential for discovery! Becoming involved in MS research was a field change for me – I’ve worked across a range of different diseases both in humans, and in animals. In 2020 I saw an opportunity to apply my skills to make significant advancements in understanding the underlying genetic causes of MS. I came for the discoveries but it’s the people with MS that I connect with now that continue to inspire me to push forward with my research.

I am excited about the continual growth in involvement of consumers in research. This is not necessarily MS specific, but I find the value of conducting research with consumer partners, to be immense. It is through consumer partnerships that as a researcher I can see the importance of my work. On the scientific / biology front my excitement is all about the data being generated all around the world. Researchers are generating profiles of individual cells in the brain – including all the types of cells that are important in MS. This is data that I can use to understand the findings from my own projects. When we share data and connect different experiments across different parts of the world, I believe we really have a shot at understanding every aspect of MS development – and how we can focus that to find better therapies, preventions, or cures.

My research begins with families where multiple members of the family have MS. We know that a person’s genetics can influence their risk of developing MS, but the occurrence of multiple closely related family members with MS (3 or more) is unusual. We think that genetics is playing a bigger role in these families than it does for most people with MS who do not have a family history of the disease. I invite families like these to join the MS Family Study where they provide a blood or saliva sample for us to obtain DNA from. I then use this DNA to sequence the genome of each person in the family – which is reading their entire genetic code. With this data I look for changes in the genetic code that are rare in the broader population, that are shared between all family members with MS, and are not present in their unaffected family members. I then study the biological effects of these changes and how they might contribute to MS development.

My research is important as it seeks to understand at the genetic level why some families have multiple people who develop MS. This information is then used to study whether other people with MS have the same or similar genetic changes, potentially uncovering several mechanisms as to -why- MS develops, which will tell us -where- to target our efforts to develop new MS therapies.

My research sits both inside the laboratory and outside of it. My lab is both a bench in our laboratory (that I share with my talented students!) and a high-performance computer cluster where I analyse data. I enjoy being able to work across the entire project as a researcher with both laboratory and analytical skills. Seeing samples arrive from the families I have recruited, extracting their DNA, generating their genome sequences, and then analysing them. The challenge is always finding enough time for every exciting aspect of the project!