Society grants $800,000 to Sylvia Lawry Centre.

The National MS Society has just committed $800,000 over the next four years to the MS International Federation (MSIF) to help support the Sylvia Lawry Centre in Munich, Germany, an innovative international collaborative effort to mine data available from MS clinical studies around the world.

This multimillion-dollar center for MS research was set up in February 2001 and is named for the late founder of the National MS Society and the MSIE 

A team of top statisticians and biometricians at the Institute for Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the Technical University of Munich will collect important data from past and current clinical trials for MS therapies and in studies of the natural history of the disease, or how it behaves when it is not treated at all. They will analyze this information and make it available to MS investigators worldwide.

One of the first efforts will involve analyzing in detail the performance of placebo groups from past clinical trials. These are the people who received inert (or "dummy") treatment. The plans call for the creation of "virtual" placebo groups, which should help to reduce the need for people to take inactive substances during future clinical trials.

"This Centre is one of the most exciting MS research projects," commented Dr. W. Ian McDonald, the MSIF's Medical Advisory Board chair. "Without `virtual' placebo groups, future trials of MS drugs are going to be slower and more expensive." The Sylvia Lawry Centre promises to greatly increase understanding of MS and speed the search for new therapies.