Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the major disabling disease of young adults, affecting 1:1000 persons in the EU. The costs per patient are ranked the second highest of all brain diseases. There is no cure for MS yet, and the disease course is highly unpredictable. Biomarkers in body fluids are useful to objectively evaluate MS disease characteristics and responses to therapeutics at limited costs. In addition, biomarkers can be used to elucidate the pathology and provide lead points to develop therapies aimed at inhibiting disease progression in MS. Excellent CSF biomarker research for MS cannot be performed by single research centers, since it is difficult to obtain sufficient numbers of samples for biomarker evaluation. The European leading research groups on CSF biomarkers for MS have recently initialized a network, named BioMS-eu, to collaborate and optimize CSF biomarker research.
Mission statement
The goal of BioMS-eu is to form a collaborative network to improve the quality of CSF biomarker research in MS. This will lead to well validated assays for predicting prognosis, diagnosis and monitoring therapeutic efficacy in neurodegenerative diseases.
