Patient study to identify new disease characteristics

The focus of the research of CONTROL^MS is a cohort study of 1000 patients with early onset multiple sclerosis. These patients will be followed up for more than 10 years by medical supervision and scientific observation. The investigators hope to discover new biological traits characteristic of MS, so-called biomarkers. Biomarkers provide physicians with important information, e.g. on how the disease will most likely develop in the individual patient and how patients respond to treatments.

Strict adherence to ethical standards

Both the recruitment of study participants as well as the storage of the bioprobes collected later will be carried out in accordance with strict ethical standards. For this, investigators will conduct a subproject in which standardized protocols will be developed and approved by a medical ethics commission. A data bank will also be established as an anonymized register of the biomaterial. On the basis of this platform four individual projects will selectively search for biomarkers.

Transferring research findings rapidly into the clinical routine

Since there are many clinical centers and cooperation partners from practices participating in this project, the investigators hope that the research findings will be rapidly transferred into daily medical routine. In this way diagnostics, treatment and care of MS patients in Germany will improve in the medium to long-term.

The research network will be coordinated by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Hemmer (Technical University, Munich). His deputy coordinator is Prof. Dr. Ralf Gold (University of Bochum) who is also responsible for the cohort study.