Few areas of MS research are more exciting than that of cell-based therapies: attempts to transplant cells into areas of myelin damage to repair this nerve-insulating substance, and possibly improve nerve impulse conduction. Jeffery D. Kocsis, PhD (Yale University, New Haven, CT) has been a front-runner in this arena. Dr. Kocsis and colleague have transplanted human myelin-making cells from nerves outside the brain and spinal cord) into areas of myelin damage in the spinal cords of rats: cells formed relatively extensive myelin and previously obstructed nerve impulse conduction improved. His team also demonstrated the potential of cells in bone marrow (spongy tissue found in bones) to develop into myelin-forming cells and to repair myelin on nerve fibers in the rat spinal cord.

Now Dr. Kocsis is taking these findings further with funding from a Collaborative MS Research Center Award from the National MS Society. Together with established MS researchers and outstanding scientists from other fields of expertise, his Yale team is exploring facets of tissue damage in MS and testing how cell transplantation and other methods may protect and repair central nervous system tissue, and ultimately restore function in people with MS.

Dr. Kocsis received his Ph.D. in anatomy from Wayne State University, Detroit, and completed postdoctoral fellowships in neurology at Harvard Medical School and in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Boston. He joined the faculty at Yale in 1986, where he is now Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology. He also serves as a Senior Medical Research Career Scientist for the Department of Veterans Affairs and is Associate Director of the Neuroscience and Regeneration Research Center at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, West Haven, CT, a facility that has gathered world-renowned scientists in an effort to develop new treatments for spinal cord injury and related disorders.