Ultra-high field Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Brain Structure and Function in Multiple Sclerosis ($2.6 million)
Ravi Menon, PhD, and his team at Robarts Research Institute and Western’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, will be working to develop and use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods to inform decisions about drug timing and dosage for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients by measuring biomarkers of the disease. The hope is to characterize MS in patients on a microscopic scale which could lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease, and therefore the ability to intervene sooner with drug treatments leading to better patient outcomes and lower treatment costs.
“The lifetime cost of these drugs for a single MS patient is about $1 million. If we could come up with a way to decide when, and what dose of drug to deliver to each patient, we could save the health care system billions of dollars,” said Menon.