ACP recognizes that researchers face a number of daunting challenges that can impede progress into understanding the causes of mechanisms of multiple sclerosis and other related disorders.
As an organization focused on MS, ACP knows high-quality and well-annotated biospecimens can be a challenge to obtain. Useful information is scattered across scores of publications rather than consolidated in a single, central location. Study findings and relevant results are not always shared or accessible to the larger research community. And novel ideas can get buried under scads of publications that explore the hypothesis of the moment.
ACP seeks to address these challenges and make sure that researchers have the ability to conceive and execute well-informed, innovative, and feasible experimental approaches to finding a cure for MS.
Innovation is the key to ACP’s approach
ACP’s innovative strategy has been nationally recognized over the years. In 2011, for instance, ACP received the 2011 Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award from the Sawyer Business School at Boston’s Suffolk University. This award recognizes that a small organization with modest resources, but a truly innovative strategy, can make a big impact on research.
Our collaboration with the scientific community accelerates MS research
Part of what makes ACP so unique is its collaboration with the entire MS community. ACP collaborated with the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease to launch the Multiple Sclerosis Discovery Forum—an interactive virtual community and information portal that connects and educates investigators who study MS and other demyelinating disorders of the central nervous system. This online research community should have a powerful impact on the generation of novel hypotheses that will shape future studies in MS.
ACP’s Clinical Effectiveness Study Network also promises a substantial future impact. This network brings together our ACP Repository clinical sites into an organized group focused on designing and conducting important clinical research in MS and other related disorders. The first joint research project of this group is currently being developed.
We’ve already had an impact on addressing the challenges MS researchers face
ACP has helped to address a significant challenge for the MS research community. Our Repository has thousands of samples and datasets, as well as millions of data points deposited for the benefit of all researchers. Review the Repository’s current status. To date, ACP’s biosamples and data have enabled a great number of research studies worldwide, many of which could not have taken place without the Repository.
