Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is known as "Canada's disease" as our country has one of the highest rates of MS worldwide. MS can cause serious symptoms such as impaired vision, loss of motor skills, and issues with cognition. Our goal is to understand the underlying factors that cause MS, and identify possible treatments to repair MS-related damage. We are specifically interested in factors that affect stem cells in brain. Brain stem cells have the ability to form oligodendrocytes (specialized cells that make myelin, or white matter, the protective coating surrounding nerve cells). In MS, both myelin and oligodendrocytes are damaged. My earlier work shows that fractalkine, an immune molecule, communicates with stem cells and instructs them to make oligodendrocytes. However, mutations that disrupt fractalkine signalling are associated with MS and/or worsened disease. I have also found that when stem cells are isolated in a dish, decreasing fractalkine signalling may prevent oligodendrocyte formation. This raises the possibility that MS-related mutations that impact fractalkine signalling may also affect stem cells. These abnormal stem cells may contribute to MS disease progression and prevent proper brain repair. For my PhD project, I will look how this mutation affects production of oligodendrocytes and myelin formation from stem cells; first in a dish, and then in an MS mouse model. Since my previous work showed that fractalkine can boost oligodendrocytes and brain repair in mice, I will investigate if mice with the mutation can be treated with fractalkine. We hope our data will help us better understand why MS occurs, and provide a foundation to develop personalized, reparative MS-treatments.