Hi Reddit! I’m Richard Reynolds, Professor of Cellular Neurobiology at Imperial College London and Chair of the 3Rs Advisory Group. My research team and I are currently studying multiple sclerosis using a combination of cell cultures, animal models, and human brain tissues. Ask Me Anything.
Multiple sclerosis is a devastating condition that affects the nervous system of young adults and results in significant disability.
Research in my group aims to understand the reasons for damage to neurons in the brain in MS and how we can develop drugs to stop it.
To do this we use a combination of neurons grown in cell cultures, animal models of MS (primarily rats) and human brain tissues.
Research involving animals forms an important element of our work, but is not undertaken lightly. In recent years, we have worked at improving the animal models of MS to make them better reflect what we know about how MS affects the human brain.
This has also led us to carry out more of our research using human brain tissues donated after death, which has resulted in a substantial reduction in our use of animals.
This is also a reflection of my role as Chair of the 3Rs Advisory Group and my effort to improve and disseminate the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) principles among Imperial researchers (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research/regulation/).
Proof:
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/r.reynolds
Multiple sclerosis research by me and my team:
Extensive grey matter pathology in the cerebellum in multiple sclerosis is linked to inflammation in the subarachnoid space (2015) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nan.12199/abstract;jsessionid=A067D6A5EA8B2B97DB524DF6BCBFCC8C.f02t02
Cortical grey matter demyelination can be induced by elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines in the subarachnoid space of MOG-immunized rats (2013) https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/12/3596/445144
An ex-vivo multiple sclerosis model of inflammatory demyelination using hyperbranched polymer (2013) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961213004547?via%3Dihub
Other info:
Animal research at Imperial College London: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research/ About the Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Tissue Bank: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/multiple-sclerosis-and-parkinsons-tissue-bank/ Animal research report 2016/17: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-integrity/animal-research/annual-report/