BioMS Centre:
Country: Ireland
City: Galway
Institution: SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices (CÚRAM), University of Galway
Website: https://curamdevices.ie/, https://vimeo.com/showcase/11298101
PI: Dr. Una FitzGerald, una.fitzgerald@universityofgalway.ie
Co-PI: Dr. Jill McMahon, jill.mcmahon@universityofgalway.ie
Team members (name, position and contact e-mail):
Shima Shapoori, s.shapoori1@universityofgalway.ie
Bianca Castelli, b.castelli1@universityofgalway.ie
Patrick Hurley, p.hurley3@universityofgalway.ie
We have successfully advertised our study and attracted approximately 100 volunteers to participate in the research. We have collected samples from 23 healthy control participants, 27 people with relapsing-remitting MS (pwRRMS), and 10 people with progressive MS (pwPMS). All the samples have been stored at -70oC . We used ELISA and Mesoscale Discovery (MSD) technology to detect KFLC, LFLC, CHI3L1, CXCL13, NFL, and GFAP in serum, saliva and nasal secretions. Moreover, The University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) has been carried out on 14 control participants and 28 pwMS. We have also applied for ethical approval to have access to the clinical history of the study participants who have MS, retrospectively. Finally, we hope to develop a point-of-care (POC) device to help pwMS to monitor their disease faster, easier and non-invasively.
We recently produced a suite of videos summarising MS Research in our group. The videos are accessible at the Vimeo URL, below.
https://vimeo.com/showcase/11298101.