Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis.

Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis is a nonprofit organization dedicated to curing MS by determining its causes. Focused primarily on accelerating the pace of MS breakthroughs, Accelerated Cure Project seeks to remove obstacles to investigating the causes of MS and to facilitate collaboration between research organizations and clinicians.

Art Mellor is the CEO, President, and co-founder of the Accelerated Cure Project. A noted technology visionary and entrepreneur, Mr. Mellor was diagnosed with MS in 2000 at age 37 while in the midst of starting his third technology company. After months of investigation following his diagnosis, he was frustrated, to say the least, by the limited information about the causes of MS, and by the lack of a clearly defined, comprehensive plan to cure the disease. As a result, he left the commercial world in 2001 and started the Boston Cure Project in conjunction with his neurologist, Dr. Timothy Vartanian, Chief of the Department on Demyelinating Diseases at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Accelerated Cure Project has two major programs in place to support its mission. It is actively building a large-scale, multidisciplinary Sample Repository that will consist of thousands of blood, tissue, and data samples collected in such a way as to be useful to researchers investigating all potential causes of the disease, both genetic and environmental, as opposed to single isolated areas. Scientists working in multiple disciplines will be able to perform research on the same population of samples and identify the potentially multiple factors which work together to cause MS. Since it is widely accepted that MS is caused by a combination of multiple factors, current research that is being done only in single areas of study, continues to yield little insight into the true cause of the disease. Accelerated Cure Project’s large-scale, multi-disciplinary approach is desperately needed for new breakthroughs to take place.

Accelerated Cure Project is also creating and executing the Cure Map. The Cure Map is the organization’s systematic plan to determine the causes of MS. Through it, the group is analyzing and cataloguing the results of past cause-related MS research into five categories: Genetics, Toxic Agents, Pathogens, Nutrition, and Trauma. It is prioritizing unanswered questions, identifying areas that warrant further investigation, and designing and executing experiments to provide conclusive answers.

So novel is this work that it attracted the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2004. The Accelerated Cure Project’s analysis of research into the genetic causes of MS brought into being the first ever listing of genetic studies in MS. As a result, Accelerated Cure Project and the CDC are currently collaborating on the publication of a more detailed review of an area of genetics shown to have strong links to MS.

MS experts from such prestigious institutions as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, University of California San Francisco, and even the National Institute of Health, support Accelerated Cure Project. They are members of Accelerated Cure Project’s scientific advisory board and they are guiding work on both the Cure Map and Sample Repository programs.

In 2004, Accelerated Cure Project took the Sample Repository program from concept to reality. The organization successfully launched the pilot version of the repository. Blood and data samples are now being collected from individuals with MS and first-degree relatives, from two hospitals in Massachusetts, serving as the first step in a process that will ultimately entail national collections from MS clinics across the entire country. Ultimately thousands of samples will be collected and distributed to researchers investigating the causes of MS.

For more information, visit www.acceleratedcure.org, email info@acceleratedcure.org, or contact the organization by phone at 781/487-0008.

You can download a PDF document with a brief overview of the Accelerated Cure Project by clicking here.