MS society has committed to funding the centre for another 5 years. MS Society has recently announced that is committing to funding a further 5 years of the Edinburgh Centre for MS Research, which it has been funding since 2007. The Centre is jointly led by CRM co-director Professor Anna Williams and INCR's Professor David Lyons. The funding will amount to almost £2 million of continued support to continue the groundbreaking research carried out into Multiple Sclerosis. In Multiple Sclerosis, the protective coating around nerves, called myelin, is damaged. This damage occurs when the body's immune system attacks the myelin in the brain and spinal cord by mistake. This causes a range of symptoms such as blurred vision, memory loss, problems with emotion, and fatigue.The Edinburgh Centre for MS Research has shown that nerve damage in MS can start very soon after the myelin is damaged by the immune system. In this new grant, Professors Williams and Lyons and their team aim to understand and test how we might prevent this early damage, and develop more personalised ways to treat MS. The Edinburgh Centre brings together the right researchers and the right tools to do this. We’re proud to do world-leading research into MS at the University of Edinburgh Centre of Excellence with the help of MS Society funding for nearly 20 years now. This new funding will help us continue our groundbreaking research into nerve damage in MS – allowing us to measure changes, find new targets for treatments, and test out the most promising in the lab. In the long run, we hope this work will contribute to our shared goal of finding treatments to slow or stop MS for everyone. Professor Anna Williams Co-Lead at the Edinburgh Centre for MS Research MS Society announcement Anna Williams' Research MS Society Edinburgh Centre for MS Research Publication date 04 May, 2026
