Grant Awarded to the Accelerated Cure Project: A Partnership to Foster Research and Clinical Care

The Transverse Myelitis Association has established a partnership with the Accelerated Cure Project.  In November 2007, the TMA awarded a $35,000 grant to ACP for the purpose of enrolling people with TM, NMO, ADEM and ON into the ACP repository.  The Accelerated Cure Project represents a wonderful opportunity to foster and facilitate research on these rare neuroimmunologic disorders.  Researchers are provided with access to a large database of information and samples that would not otherwise be available to any single medical research institution.  The TMA is actively engaged in recruiting adults and children with TM, ADEM, NMO and ON into the ACP repository.  The TMA is represented on the ACP oversight committee.

The Accelerated Cure Project has been focused on finding the causes of MS.  We began our collaboration with ACP because we came to understand the relationships between the neuroimmunologic disorders of the central nervous system and believe that by encouraging research into all of these disorders we will more effectively develop an understanding of each of them.  Thus, ACP has expanded its efforts to include all of these disorders in their repository.  

The ACP and TMA partnership is also focused on an advocacy effort to encourage effective medical care for people with all of these rare neuroimmunologic disorders.  These disorders share many of the same symptoms, and the same symptom management strategies are effective across these disorders.  Thus, we are encouraging neuroimmunologists with expertise and experience in one of these disorders to offer medical care to people with all of these disorders.  And while there are differences in the long-term treatments between MS and recurrent TM or NMO, there is a significant convergence of approaches for acute therapies.  Thus, we are encouraging neuroimmunologists to provide medical care to people at the most critical time; during an inflammatory attack. 

Our relationship with ACP is growing; there is great potential for collaboration.  Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, a co-director of the Johns Hopkins TM Center and member of the TMA Medical Advisory Board, also serves on the ACP scientific advisory committee, is instrumental in the development of the ACP repository and directs the repository collection at Johns Hopkins along with Jana Goins.  Dr. Greenberg and Art Mellor, President of ACP, will be presenting about the ACP project at our symposium this July in Seattle.  If you have TM, ADEM, NNO, ON or MS, you will also be able to enroll in the ACP repository at the symposium in Seattle. 

As of May 2008, there were 1,131 subjects enrolled in the ACP repository and these include both adult and pediatric cases:  MS: 733, CIS (clinically isolated syndrome): 30, TM: 70, NMO: 13, ON: 4, ADEM: 6, and 275 controls. 

The ACP repository could help us find the causes and possible cures for TM, NMO, ADEM and ON.  But this will only happen if we can raise the money to support specific research projects on these rare disorders.  At present, almost all of the ACP repository studies are focused on MS.  When scientists learn about MS, they are also learning about these other disorders.  The more they understand about the immune system and the more they understand how and why the nervous system is vulnerable to these attacks, the more they may gain insights into each of these disorders.  To learn the causes of TM, ADEM, ON or NMO and to develop better diagnostic tools, researchers need to specifically study these disorders.  The TMA will be targeting fundraising efforts in order to specifically support TM, ADEM, NMO and ON studies from the ACP repository.  We will need your help to make this happen.