We are now accepting DONATIONS for clinical trials in MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS patients to promote REMYELINATION and repair lesions!

What is Multiple sclerosis?

Multiple sclerosis is the most frequent degenerative disease of the central nervous system, affecting 2.8 million people worldwide. The onset of this disease is often between 20 and 40 years old and there is currently no cure.

In patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, myelinating cells are specifically attacked. Myelinating cells produce myelin around our neurons. Myelin is absolutely necessary for the function of the nervous system and to prevent its degeneration. Attacks to myelinating cells occur successively and lead to the formation of lesions where myelin is lost. These are called demyelinating lesions.

Our body is capable to rebuild myelin - to remyelinate our neurons -  after an attack, but the efficiency of this process is limited, being more or less efficient at the start of the disease but becoming inefficient as the disease progresses and with age. Neurons that have lost their myelin for an extended period of time degenerate and cannot regrow or very inefficiently. This can lead to the permanent loss of any function controlled by the central nervous system, for example movement, speech, vision...

To prevent this irreversible loss of functions, we need efficient treatments that induce Remyelination.

Our findings

We found that the protein histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2), that belongs to a type of proteins called chromatin-remodeling enzymes, can control the activation of our genes that are necessary to rebuild myelin around our neurons after a lesion. We also showed that Theophylline, a potent activator of HDAC2 that is already used in clinical practice for the treatment of lung diseases such as asthma, accelerates and improves Remyelination after lesion in young adults and also in aged individuals, where remyelination efficiency is strongly decreased.

More information on our findings and our research can be found at the following links:

• Press release (English)
• Publication in Nature Communications
• Podcast (English)
• Blog article (English)

Clinical trials

We are now organizing clinical trials in multiple sclerosis patients to test the efficiency of Theophylline to remyelinate and repair lesions and prevent neurodegeneration due to demyelination.

To start the clinical trials as soon as possible, we accept any DONATION. If we pool our forces together, we can be fast and turn this PROJECT into REALITY!

We want to thank all our donators for their generosity and also for their effort in helping us to raise funds. So far, we have raised 50 000 € from our donators and 200 000 € from two foundations. This is very encouraging! However, we still need to raise 3 to 4 times this amount, which we hope to obtain through donations and foundations. For information, we have now to go through legal advice to be eligible for a large grant from a foundation. This will of course take time, but we will update this page as soon as we make another major step forward.

To send your donation, please use the following account:

 

If you need a donation certificate, please contact Mrs Cathrin Müller-Czarnetzki at the following email address: mcathrin@uni-mainz.de  

Please, send Mrs Müller-Czarnetzki the amount and date of the donation, and the address where to send the donation certificate.

Thank you very much for your support!