Multiple sclerosis postdoctoral research fellowship Emanuela Oldoni. (ECTRIMS)

“ECTRIMS postdoctoral research fellowship exchange program” is a European program for young researchers in neuroscience. It facilitates the training in research related to multiple sclerosis (MS) and the main goal is to maximize exchange of information and to help grow well-trained research scientists focused on problems in MS.

MS is the most common neurological disorder of young adults and its cause is still unknown. It is characterized by an important patient-to-patient heterogeneity in terms of clinical (onset, severity,…) as well as paraclinical features (laboratory measures, imaging). The past few years have seen important progress in understanding genetic susceptibility to MS. Understanding heterogeneity of disease is the next key challenge. Because of that, the aims of this project is to investigate additional body fluid (cerebrospinal fluid and serum) biomarkers related to the main disease mechanisms, such as inflammation, demyelination and axonal loss, and combine them with clinical, genetic and imaging data on the same study population. In this way, we address whether patient subgroups previously defined based on the genetic correspond to different disease mechanisms explaining their impact on outcome.