The MS Campaign
MS Stand Up is MBPF’s Campaign to fight MS. The campaign organizes an annual comedy club benefit where proceeds from sponsorships and ticket sales go to help fund medical research initiatives. Each year MBPF’s Board evaluates the MS research landscape to identify areas where there are unmet funding needs. The money raised at the MS Stand Up benefit is directed to these efforts.
This year, MBPF / MS Stand Up will support an exciting initiative being conducted at Weill-Cornell Medical. Researchers at Weill-Cornell are working on identifying markers both in blood tests and in central nervous system imaging that can accurately detect the extent and path of disease in MS patients. This will help in early diagnosis and allow doctors to better select treatments that more effectively target the type of damage being done. Our contribution to this effort will help fund the researchers that are leading this ground-breaking scientific initiative that could change the way MS is treated.
Last year, after the first Comedy Club benefit, MS Stand Up supported two successful research efforts that have subsequently received significant funding from other sources. We are proud to have been a part of moving these efforts forward.
1. Research Efforts to Repurpose FDA-Approved Drugs
The first effort looks at funding regenerative medicine research targeted to promote the regeneration of the myelin sheath damaged by the effects of MS. Myelin destruction is what causes disability.
2. Research Identifying Specific Gut Bacteria As The Root Cause Of MSBased on studies that members of the Mind Brain Philanthropic Foundation have participated in, there are differences in the gut microbiome of those with MS and non-MSers. The fundraising, then, also wants to explore the possible connection between epsilon toxin-producing strains of Clostridium perfringens within the gut microbiome of MS patients and whether it targets explicitly the blood-brain barrier and myelin.
MS is the Disease we are targeting in the MS Stand Up Campaign.
We evaluate and determine where there are unmet financial needs and send the dollars we raise to these areas of research.
If these research initiatives are not funded, the scientists can not move forward and often promising avenues of exploration will be lost.
Let’s not let this happen. “Donate Now” to keep research moving.
Meet Researchers At Work
Based on studies that members of the Mind Brain Philanthropic Foundation have participated in, there are differences in the gut microbiome of those with MS and non-MSers.
The fundraising, then, also wants to explore the possible connection between epsilon toxin-producing strains of Clostridium perfringens within the gut microbiome of MS patients and whether it targets explicitly the blood-brain barrier and myelin.