MS Australia is excited to announce the three recipients of the first round of incubator grants for 2024.
- Three MS researchers have been awarded incubator grants, which aim to explore new ideas in MS research, giving them the opportunity to test their innovative ideas.
- These incubator grants are designed to test new concepts in MS research and gather early data needed to build larger projects in the future.
- The new projects will unlock new insights into disease progression, address social needs for better MS care, and identify biological signs of MS for better diagnosis and treatment for people living with the disease.
The recipients of MS Australia’s latest one-year grants, Dr Xin Lin (University of Tasmania), Ms Isabelle Weld-Blundell (The University of Melbourne) and Dr Dongang Wang (The University of Sydney), have been awarded seed funding to investigate groundbreaking, novel research ideas.
Incubator grants provide funding for the initial stages of innovative new research, intending to gather initial data needed to seek additional support from a range of funding bodies.
Historically, this scheme has been highly successful. With every dollar invested, researchers have secured up to $27 in subsequent funding, accelerating their areas of research in MS.
2024 incubator grants
Dr Dongang Wang and his team at The University of Sydney, NSW, are harnessing the power of advanced AI to monitor magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to improve the precision of how disease progression in MS can be predicted.
Using data from more than 900 people with MS from the largest international MS registry (MSBase), Dr Wang and his team will study how large state-of-art computer programs that learn from data (machine learning models) can identify key factors that predict disease progression. Following this, Dr Wang and his team will use data from multiple centres to evaluate the real-word effectiveness of these prediction tools.
Dr Wang’s project aims to demonstrate how advanced AI technologies may revolutionise the prediction of disease progression and outcomes in MS. This will help us understand how MS progresses in its early stages, enabling earlier, more effective and personalised treatments. It will also help with identifying the right people to take part in clinical trials.
In his PhD studies, Dr Xin Lin found proteins that were associated with MS by combining large sets of biological and clinical data. Now, Dr Lin and his team at the University of Tasmania, Tasmania, are expanding on this work to validate these proteins as biological indicators (biomarkers) of MS and identify new proteins associated with the disease. They will use large international datasets, including data from the Ausimmune Longitudinal (Auslong) study, and employ cutting-edge statistical methods.
This work will allow Dr Lin and his team to understand how these proteins interact with other MS-related molecules and how they contribute to MS risk. These proteins may be excellent targets for innovative diagnostic methods and treatment of MS. As highlighted on World MS Day 2024, earlier diagnosis and earlier treatment has great potential to reduce the burden of disease on people’s quality of life.
Ms Isabelle Weld-Blundell and her team at The University of Melbourne, Victoria, are investigating tools for assessing social needs in people living with MS, which are often overlooked in MS care.
Social needs refer to a person’s individual circumstances such as employment opportunities, access to safe housing, food security, access to exercise facilities and access to healthcare. It also includes social support, being able to take part in social activities, interpersonal relationships and being able to understand finances. The social needs of people with MS are not routinely looked at in MS care, yet they have a huge impact on health and are responsible for about a third to half of health outcomes.
Ms Weld-Blundell and her team will be investigating what screening tools are available for measuring social needs. They will also meet with people living with MS, carers and clinicians to explore how relevant and acceptable these tools are and how they could be adapted to better support MS care in Australia.
By assessing the social needs of people living with MS, strategies can be found to address them, which could reduce unfair differences in health outcomes.
With the award of $74,813 for these three new incubator grants, MS Australia has funded over 360 research projects and committed over $54 million to MS research projects.
The quality of applications was outstanding, showcasing the exceptional level of research underway in Australia. Continuing our fundraising efforts is crucial to sustain the momentum of high-calibre MS research, driving us closer to our common goal of a world without MS.
For more information about these grants and other research projects currently funded by MS Australia, please click here.
