Why don't spinal cord OPCs remyelinate well in multiple sclerosis and how do we fix it?

In multiple sclerosis (MS), myelin damage occurs in the brain and spinal cord, and regeneration of myelin (remyelination) is a key research strategy to design therapies for neuroprotection. However, patients with spinal cord MS lesions have important disability (reduced walking and bladder failure) and poorer long-term outcomes than without spinal cord lesions. Pathological data suggest that remyelination in the spinal cord is less efficient than in the brain. However, why remyelination is poorer in the spinal cord is not clear, hampering best stratification of patients for the most appropriate therapeutics. This project will tackle this question, using transcriptomic datasets from human and zebrafish, generating hypotheses that will then be tested in zebrafish as an in vivo model organism and on human post mortem tissue.