Our Crowdfunding Groups
If you know someone with multiple sclerosis, you want to know why MS progresses so quickly and severely for 10-15% of people with MS that they need 24-hour care.
Until now, researchers have studied people with MS in all stages of disease progression except those at the farthest end of the spectrum. Our ground-breaking CASA-MS Preliminary Study was based on the belief that the study of very severe progression will provide important clues that will benefit everyone with MS.
Why hasn't such research been done before?
Logistics and money! Most people at this stage of MS are hard to locate. They are lost to the research community, scattered in long-term care facilities or cared for at home. Few see a neurologist because it is generally thought nothing can be done to help. Even if enough research subjects could be located, testing would very important group of people with MS in research.
How did Buffalo Neuroimaging overcome these obstacles?
People with MS and their friends and families made it happen! A few years ago, BNAC's Advisory Council connected our center with The Boston Home, a 150-bed skilled-nursing facility in the Boston Massachusetts area. It specializes in caring for people with MS needing 24-hour care. Together, we designed a comprehensive study which has already yielded very important results. Thanks to donations from The Jacquemin Family Foundation, the Advisory Council, and a $100,000 challenge grant from the Annette Funicello Fund, over $500,000 was raised in gifts large and small for the preliminary study.
Major Finding of 1st CASA-MS Study
Rather than focusing on white matter lesions, a better way to understand MS progression is to look at changes in the volume of the brain's grey matter.
This opens a promising new avenue of MS research.
To learn more about the findings, read the University at Buffalo Press Release or the full published paper.
The NEXT STEP
We want to take what we have learned so far to the next step. That will allow us to answer questions from the scientific community stemming from our CASA-MS published papers. This nexrt study will delve deeper in our quest to better understand the nature of MS and the causes of severe progression.
Why Now?
All the conditions are right to push forward now.
The participants with very severe symptoms in Boston and their counterparts with much less severe symptoms in Buffalo are eager to continue, as are our research partners at The Boston Home and the Jacobs MS Center in Buffalo.
Will you take the NEXT STEP with us?
Now, more than ever. before, MS research depends on PRIVATE SUPPORT.
As of 2/1/25 we have raised $271,000 (90%) of the $300,000 needed. We hope you will consider a gift today or a pledge to be completed by 6/30/25.
Please make clicking on the orange GIVE NOW button on the upper right YOUR NEXT STEP.
Thank you for your consideration.
Larry Montani, Campaign Chair Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center CASA-MS Team Advisory Council Members
A special thanks to The Jacquemin Family Foundation , Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases, The Advisory Council, and Anonymous Donors for their advance gifts and pledges.
