The Barancik award lecture: Multi-disciplinary research will be the key to stop, restore, and end MS.

Abstract

The past 25 years have brought extraordinary advances in our understanding of MS pathogenesis and the subsequent development of effective therapies. Collaborative genetics efforts have uncovered the association of 236 common DNA variants with disease susceptibility and the first association with disease severity, paving the way to more effective therapies, particularly for progressive forms of the disease. In parallel, and in addition to established environmental disease triggers or modifiers, new collaborative work has revealed new associations with components of the gut microbiome. This research opened a new and exciting prospect for exploring the gut-brain axis, with the potential to also provide new pharmacologic targets and diet-based therapies. Finally, with the availability of massive amounts of information and unprecedented computer power, a new wave of artificial intelligence (AI)-based research is sprawling. These investigations will result in statistically powerful predictive models to identify individuals at risk even years before the disease is clinically apparent. Furthermore, using approaches like semantic representation and causal inference, some of these approaches will be explainable in biomedical terms, thus making them trusted and facilitating their implementation in the clinical setting. The common thread that characterizes all of these advances is multi-disciplinary collaboration among scientists in the form of formal consortia, working groups, or ad hoc partnerships. This may be the "secret sauce" of modern science and the best strategy to stop, restore, and end MS.