Research Insights Episodes

Welcome back to Part Two of our coverage of the 2026 ACTRIMS Forum. This week, we shift our focus to emerging therapies and clinical insights that are re-shaping the future of MS care. From the latest information on stem cell transplantation to evolving treatment strategies to the labels used to describe MS, we're breaking down the complex science into the conversations that matter most to the MS community. Joining me to discuss one of the most significant presentations from the 2026 ACTRIMS Fo...

Last week, over 1,400 scientists and clinicians gathered in San Diego, California, at the 2026 Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis annual meeting, better known as the ACTRIMS Forum. This week, in Part One of our coverage, you'll hear from three of the experts who presented their research at the ACTRIMS Forum. Dr. Manuel Friese, a clinician-scientist at the Institute of Neuroimmunology and Multiple Sclerosis at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Ha...

The first coordinated global research strategy to prevent MS has been announced. This week, Dr. Bruce Bebo, the National MS Society's Executive Vice President and Chief Research & Medical Affairs Officer, joins me to explain what MS prevention looks like and how experts plan to achieve this remarkable goal. We'll also tell you who won the 2025 Barancik Prize for Innovation in MS Research, and we'll explain how their groundbreaking research impacts MS care. We're sharing the details of a newly ...

One of the more confusing aspects of MS is that it can present differently from one person to the next. A research team at University College London may have uncovered a reason for that when they identified two new, and quite different, subtypes of MS. Joining me to walk us through this discovery and to explain how it may impact MS clinical care is the study's principal investigator, Dr. Arman Eshaghi. We're also sharing study results that may explain how the Epstein-Barr Virus triggers MS in ...

Scientists are expanding our understanding of MS at an unprecedented pace. This week, Dr. Leorah Freeman discusses why, as new discoveries and medications enter clinical practice, neurologists and MS specialists should ask themselves 3 important questions when considering a patient's treatment plan. Dr. Freeman is the Director of the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Center at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also leads the MS and Neuroimmunology fellowsh...

This special episode of RealTalk MS is sponsored by EMD Serono and is only intended for a U.S. audience. EMD Serono is the healthcare business of Merck, KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the United States and Canada. Please note this episode is only intended for a U.S. audience. In this special episode of RealTalk MS, Professor Elisabeth Celius and Amanda Montague join me to explore new consensus recommendations for the future of MS care from MS in the 21st Century. We'll hear what experts and peopl...

From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people living with MS have been justifiably concerned about how a COVID-19 infection might impact their MS. As the new "Stratus" strain of COVID-19 is currently surging in the United States, research is providing answers we didn't have five years ago. Dr. Robert Fox, the Managing Director of the NARCOMS Patient Registry, joins me to discuss how COVID-19 infections and other infections impact people with MS. As ECTRIMS, the world's largest MS res...

Last week, over 9600 MS researchers and clinicians gathered in Barcelona for the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis annual scientific congress -- ECTRIMS 2025. Minutes after the conference adjourned, in what has become an annual tradition, Dr. Bruce Bebo, the Executive Vice President of Research at the National MS Society, joined me to share his initial thoughts on the science presented at the meeting. Then, Kristine Werner Ozug, a member of the RealTalk MS tea...

Since 2001, clinicians have relied on the McDonald Diagnostic Criteria as the gold standard for diagnosing someone with multiple sclerosis. As science continues to add to our understanding of MS, the McDonald Criteria have been updated in 2005, 2010, 2017, and most recently in 2024. This latest iteration of the McDonald criteria will be published in September, and today, Dr. Andrew Solomon is giving us a preview of what these changes are, what they mean, and how they're going to improve the pro...

We're witnessing the early stages of a paradigm shift, as artificial intelligence is beginning to impact virtually every aspect of healthcare, from research to patient care. And there's much, much more to come. This week, Dr. Brad Willingham, the Director of MS Research at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, joins me to discuss how AI will impact MS patient care. We'll also share the encouraging results from a Phase 2 open-label extension study for Fenebrutinib, an investigational disease-modifying th...