Grant: Project Grant

Neurodegenerative diseases are an enormous burden on Canada and it will get worse as our population ages. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is both an inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease. Canada has one of the highest rates of MS in the world. Current therapies are ineffective for stopping neurodegeneration which we call progressive MS. To understand progressive MS, we need new MRI measures to see the components of tissue damage. Tissue damage in MS may come from damage to the insulating myelin layer of nerves and from the inability to repair it. Tissue damage can also be caused by iron that can both damage the tissue leading to degeneration and also serve as a marker of areas of damage. We are developing tissue-specific methods to identify key changes in myelin and iron which drive the degenerative process in MS. These new methods enable visualizing the underlying disease processes more directly thus allowing progressive MS to be better quantified. More generally the new MRI tools will enable better tracking of neurodegenerative processes in the living brain. We will develop, compare and apply advanced MRI methods in people with progressive MS to separate iron and myelin sources. This complex process will first be improved and then compared to other ways of imaging myelin and iron. Then we will perform a 2 year study of subjects with rapidly progressing MS to understand how the lesions and whole brain tissue change. We will compare these measures to each other and to the actual clinical measures of disability. We expect our methods can unveil iron and myelin changes in progressive MS lesions and brain tissue, enabling further understanding of disease progression and enabling tracking of the degenerative process. In addition, our technical advances will enable more robust use of this method in progressive MS and other neurodegenerative diseases. Overall, this work applies new MRI methods for measuring changes in progressive MS in ways not previously possible.