MS Center Amsterdam has received a subsidy of 500,000 euro from an anonymous capital fund for their RESTORE project. In this clinical trial a drug is examined on its ability to repair damaged neurons in people with MS. The effect of the treatment will be determined with advanced techniques to measuring eye movements and retinal thickness.

The neurology and ophthalmology departments work together in this RESTORE project. The collaboration between these departments already exists for a long time. Jointly they study eye movement disorders and changes in retinal thickness in people with MS.

A new PhD candidate, Sam Hof, has been appointed as of April 1 to perform this research on the changes in the retina. Hof will work together with postdoc Jenny Nij Bijvank and professor Bernard Uitdehaag and doctors Axel Petzold and René van Rijn. He will investigate whether a particular drug is capable of repairing damaged neurons in people with MS. Since there are indications that this drug restores myelin. The study uses modern eye measuring techniques to investigate whether neuronal pathways will recover. These techniques include infrared video oculography, which can record anomalies in eye movements, and OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography), which measures the thickness of the neuronal layer in the retina.