Two researchers at University of Florida Health in Gainesville received a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the development of a multiple sclerosis, or MS, vaccination.
The five-year grant will allow Dornia Avram, PhD, professor of medicine and immunology at UF College of Medicine, and Benjamin Keselowsky, PhD, associate professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, to study the potential vaccine's power to delay a relapse of MS in mouse models.
"We want to give hope to people with multiple sclerosis," said Dr. Avram. "You cannot cure MS. There is no way. But the hope of this treatment would be to extend the remission period in the patient and keep the patient with an intact immune response in such a way that it can respond to infections."
The Research Project Grant awarded to these UF Health researchers is one of NIH's oldest and most competitive.