ECTRIMS 2025: NMSS funding, support drives progress in care
Research official highlights key developments
The world’s largest meeting on multiple sclerosis (MS) has wrapped up for the year, and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) played a central role in many of the advances highlighted there.
Nearly 10,000 people attended the 41st Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS), held Sept. 24-26 in Barcelona. The event showcased advances in early diagnosis, real-world treatment insights, and the growing focus on progressive forms of the disease — all areas in which NMSS has made significant investments.
“I’m personally very proud, and I know the society’s very pleased and proud, that many of the presentations made at this meeting and other meetings were from researchers that are supported by the National MS Society,” Bruce Bebo, PhD, executive vice president of research at the NMSS, said in an interview with Multiple Sclerosis News Today during the meeting.
Those researchers included “senior scientists who got their start and support from MS Society funding, mid-career scientists, and a lot of early-career scientists or fellows,” Bebo said. Funding researchers in different phases of their careers is a “very important way for us to make investments both for now and [for] the future,” he said.
For nearly 80 years, the society has made robust investments in MS research, which have laid the groundwork for virtually all disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) now available for MS, according to Bebo.
Research works toward finding a cure
Bebo is leading the society’s research function with one ultimate goal: to cure MS.
He said the organization’s research strategy rests on three main pillars: stopping MS progression by enabling early diagnosis and better treatments that prevent relapses, new symptoms, or any worsening of the disease; restoring lost function through approaches such as myelin repair, rehabilitation strategies, and lifestyle changes; and aiming to prevent MS altogether, by identifying people at risk and intervening before the central nervous system is involved.
Among the most important developments unveiled at ECTRIMS, according to Bebo, was the presentation of updated diagnostic criteria for MS. While the new criteria do not change the diagnosis for anyone currently living with MS, the changes are designed to enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis.
“Several new tools that were introduced as part of the diagnostic criteria … will help us identify MS earlier and earlier, in some cases even before any clinical signs or symptoms of MS become apparent,” Bebo said. “That is a huge development. We’re moving the ability to diagnose MS closer and closer to the triggering event.”
Presentations showing how DMTs perform in the real world, outside the controlled environment of clinical trials, were also among the event’s highlights, Bebo said. This “incremental, but important” work helps move the field toward precision medicine, or “finding the right drug for the right person at the right time,” he said.
Bebo said he’s noted a shift toward a greater focus on progressive MS, for which therapeutic options are limited. Research is increasingly focused on looking at what drives progression and exploring new therapeutic targets for that form of MS, he said.
“We are at the cusp of having some treatments that would benefit people in that phase of the disease, and that’s going to be our kind of launching off point for better and new and more effective therapies,” he said.
4 decades of progress in MS care
This year’s meeting also reflects progress made since the first ECTRIMS congress 41 years ago, said Bebo. Back then, only a few hundred people attended, and no DMTs existed. Now, almost 10,000 people attended, and more than 20 therapies are approved.
“That growth from decades ago, from a few hundred people to 10,000 people is, in and of itself, a milestone and a marker of the progress that we’re making,” Bebo said.
Another sign of progress is how well relapsing forms of MS are now controlled with available treatments. People with relapsing forms of MS would typically have three to four relapses per year in the era before DMTs, but “if you [are] on the right disease-modifying therapy now, you should expect to have a relapse every five years or every 10 years,” he said. “That is a huge marker on our progress.”
The challenge ahead is progressive MS, according to Bebo.
“Twenty-five years ago, when we had the first disease modifying therapies for relapsing MS, that had very modest effects, but gave us that first clue we needed to evolve and refine and get new and better treatments,” he said. “That’s where we’re at right now with progressive MS.”
”You’re going to take your pill, you’re going to take your shot, and MS will be a very, very, very small part of your life.”
In the decade ahead, safe and effective treatments for progressive forms of MS will become available, “perhaps on par with what we have for relapsing forms now,” Bebo said.
Living with progressive forms of MS “will be a little bit like type 1 diabetes,” he said. “You’re going to take your pill, you’re going to take your shot, and MS will be a very, very, very small part of your life.”
Within 10 years, doctors will be able to detect people at risk for MS and treat them to “prevent the clinical signs of MS from happening in the first place,” Bebo said.
Yet the current uncertainty surrounding federal research funding poses risks to progress, Bebo said. The NMSS and other organizations are “lobbying and advocating and raising the voices of the million people in the United States that live with MS to share that concern we all have about the effects of the research funding environment on the progress that we’re making,” he said.
“We are cautiously optimistic that advocacy [and] that raising that voice will be heard,” he said.
The ECTRIMS congress this year included a Patient Community Day, where people with MS and related neurological diseases had the opportunity to learn more about the newest advances in disease research, treatment, and care. The NMSS was one of the organizations worldwide that supported the afternoon event, which was attended by nearly 400 people onsite and thousands more online.
“All 10,000 people are here because MS exists and millions of people around the world live with MS and are affected by MS,” Bebo said. “That hasn’t always been reflected at this meeting.”
NMSS and other groups “have advocated for more involvement of people living with MS in the program and in the activities here this week, [and we are] really pleased that the ECTRIMS leadership has listened to that, is aligned with that, and has created this really cool opportunity for people to both be present physically here in Barcelona [and] to join virtually online,” he added.
Bebo said he hoped people who participated in the event will provide their feedback so it “can continue to be refined, improved, and be a real asset for the MS community.”
Note: The Multiple Sclerosis News Today team is providing live coverage of the 41st Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) Sept. 24-26. Go here to see the latest stories from the conference.
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