MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research
The MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research is a multidisciplinary centre-without-walls funded by the MS Society, dedicated to laboratory, translational and clinical research into multiple sclerosis.
The MS Centre brings together research expertise in multiple sclerosis (MS) from across the University of Edinburgh. The Centre was founded in 2007 with a grant from the MS Society, which was renewed in 2015 and again in 2021 with a further £1.85 million.
Arguably the greatest need in MS is effective treatments to slow, stop or reverse the accumulation of disability, especially in the progressive phase. This is something that people living with the condition tell us continually.
To give people with progressive MS the very best chance of finding a beneficial medicine, and fast, research within the Centre is focused on three areas:
- understanding more about neurodegeneration in progressive MS
- creating a drug discovery pipeline involving tests to screen drugs that may prevent neurodegeneration
- improving the ways we can use brain imaging in people with MS, to measure neurodegeneration and test the effectiveness of drugs in clinical trials
Summary video
In this 6-minute video, you will meet some of the researchers at the Centre and find out how we are working to achieve our research aims.
Contact us
To get in touch, please email Pamela Macdonald, Stakeholder Engagement Manager, on ms-research-centre@ed.ac.uk.
For media enquiries, please contact press.office@ed.ac.uk.
MS Centre leadership team
The MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research is led by four highly experienced Professors at the University of Edinburgh.
| Professor Siddharthan Chandran | MacDonald Chair of Neurology | Profile |
| Professor David Lyons | Chair of Neurobiology | Profile |
| Professor Anna Williams | Chair of Regenerative Neurology | Profile |
| Professor Adam Waldman | Chair of Neuroradiology | Profile |
Co-Investigators
All are University of Edinburgh unless otherwise stated.
| Dr Rafael Almeida | Chancellor's Fellow | Profile |
| Dr Mark Bastin | Reader in Brain Imaging | Profile |
| Professor Neil Carragher | Chair of Drug Discovery | Profile |
| Dr Peter Connick | Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer | Profile |
| Professor Tim Czopka | Chair of Glial Cell Biology | Profile |
| Professor Julia Edgar | Chair of Neurobiology, University of Glasgow | Profile |
| Professor Seth Grant | Chair of Molecular Neuroscience | Profile |
| Professor Giles Hardingham | City of Edinburgh Chair of Pharmacology | Profile |
| Professor David Hunt | Chair of Neuroinflammation Medicine | Profile |
| Dr Don Mahad | Senior Clinical Lecturer | Profile |
| Professor Dies Meijer |
Chair of Cellular Neurobiology |
Profile |
| Dr Veronique Miron | MRC Senior Non-Clinical Fellow | Profile |
| Professor Josef Priller | Chair of Brain Inflammation and Repair | Profile |
| Professor Colin Smith | Chair of Neuropathology | Profile |
| Professor Tara Spires-Jones | Chair of Neurodegeneration | Profile |
| Dr Adriana Tavares | Research Fellow in Positron Emission Tomography | Profile |
| Professor Joanna Wardlaw | Chair of Applied Neuroimaging | Profile |