Now
MS, so it was a good time to be
doing this. I was one of the few
at the time. The Weaver Award
helped me bring this research
avenue to the forefront,” she says.
It also helped her win other
grants and eventually, an endowed
chair. Dr. Voskuhl is now a
professor in the department
of neurology at UCLA and
program director of the UCLA
Multiple Sclerosis Program. One
outcome of her work is that two
different hormone treatments
are currently being tested in three
clinical trials. She was the first
researcher to show that estrogen
treatments may protect the
nervous system in MS. Now,
with funding from the Society’s
Fast Forward initiative to
expedite the MS drug development
process, Dr. Voskuhl’s team is
collaborating with ACADIA
Pharmaceuticals to determine
whether a novel estrogen-like
compound can protect the
nervous system from damage
in mice with experimental
autoimmune encephalomyelitis,
(EAE, an MS-like disease).
Toward new understanding
of the disease process
Dr. Anne Cross, section head
of neuro-
immunology
at Washington
University and
co-director of
the John Trotter
MS Center in
St. Louis, also
believes the
Weaver Award helped her get
her current position. “It gave me
credibility when I didn’t have
that many papers on MS,” she
says, adding, “I think the award
helped keep me in the MS field.
It certainly helped solidify my
wish to continue working on
MS.” Dr. Cross received her
Weaver Award in 1990, when
she was studying the trafficking
of white blood cells from the
bloodstream into the central
nervous system. These days her
primary focus is on better ways
to image the central nervous
system. “I would like to be able
to accomplish something similar
to a biopsy but noninvasively,”
she explains. “It would be nice
to visualize what’s going on at
the microscopic level and how
treatments are having an effect—
without hurting the patient.”
Dr. Cross is incoming chair of
the Society’s Research Programs
Advisory Committee.
Bruce Trapp, PhD, a 1986
Weaver
awardee, is now
chair of the
department of
neurosciences
at Cleveland
Clinic Lerner
Research
Institute and a professor at Case
Western Reserve University. Dr.
Trapp’s work changed the face
of MS research by showing that
nerve fibers are damaged by the
disease. His current research
aims are twofold: to obtain a better
understanding of cell development
and myelin formation in the
nervous system, and to
understand how myelin and
myelin-forming cells are
destroyed in autoimmune and
inherited diseases. His 1986
Weaver Award funded a study
of MS tissue. “Now we have the
most sophisticated brain autopsy
setup in the world at the
Cleveland Clinic, a direct
descendant of that early work.”
Dr. Philip L. De Jager, associate
professor of
neurology at
the Brigham
& Women’s
Hospital and
Harvard Medical
School, is in
the final year
of his 2008 award. His research
is focused on understanding
how genetic variation affects
neuroimmunologic function and
susceptibility to MS, and how
one goes from having a genetic
risk to developing MS. The grant
enabled his team to take a close
look at one genetic variant and
a broad look at many others, to
see what causes MS-related
alterations in immune responses.
“The Weaver Award offered me
the flexibility to pursue the
original question and grow
that question to launch a much
broader and more systematic
assessment of the consequences
of genetic variation in MS,”
he notes. “It gives me time to
develop innovative research projects
and get preliminary data to the
point where National Institutes of
