Wayne State researchers received 25 percent of the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2010 Concept Award grant, which will help find a way to reduce the symptoms and progression of multiple sclerosis.

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system, which is made up of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Symptoms may be mild, such as numbness in the limbs, or severe, such as paralysis or loss of vision.

Out of 120 submissions and eight awarded grants, Jeffrey Loeb, associate professor of the Department of Neurology and associate director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and Fei Song, assistant professor of neurology and the CMMG, received one of them. Alexander Gow, associate professor of the CMMG, received the other.

The grants, each of which are worth $114,000 for one year, were awarded through the U.S Army Medical Research and Material Command Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.

Loeb said he is not surprised WSU received 25 percent of the grants.

“We are kind of a best-kept secret in terms of both clinical and research in multiple sclerosis,” Loeb said. “We are one of the premier places in the country if not the world that studies this disease.

“The grants were initially sent anonymously. so they didn’t know we were from Wayne State. … we got the  grant based on the quality of our proposal and not where we came from.”

Loeb and Song are using the grant money to test a novel drug they developed and patented in an animal model in MS that should block the growth factor neuregulin 1.

Neuregulin 1 is a brain-produced protein that regulates many normal functions in the brain but may also have effects on immune system activation.

Song said she was excited about testing a “novel therapeutic target in an animal model” and hopes it will be a benefit to MS patients.

Loeb said Song’s and his collaboration is something like Reese’s peanut butter cups. “It’s an example of two people who do different things but come together,” Loeb said. “Her background is in animal models of multiple sclerosis, and my background is in the growth factor signaling.

“We teamed up and put this proposal together to combine both of our areas of expertise to do something novel.”

Gow will use the grant to focus on the effects of MS that affect the everyday life of patients, which he said have “received much less attention.”

This includes patients cognitive and learning deficits, memory loss and difficulties with vision and hearing.

“We will develop a novel mouse model that will allow us to study these problems in detail, particularly concerning tasks associated with hearing,” Gow said. “In the future, our model will be used to identify new drugs that may reduce the severity of these symptoms in patients.”

Gow said he is excited about the study he will conduct, because most funded research on MS deals with attempts to block the immune system from attacking the brain and it is very difficult to find money for projects aimed at tackling the everyday problems of the disease.