Center Without Walls - Program Overview

“The Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis wanted to build a winning team our Race to Erase MS so we sought the best and the brightest throughout the world to create The Nancy Davis Center Without Walls program.” – Nancy Davis

Funded by The Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis, the Center Without Walls program (CWW) has provided support that has permitted the medical community to link together multidisciplinary scientific programs and expertise across the country to advance the understanding of the cause of MS and to develop new treatments. The Center is a break-through success because of the vision, insight and flexibility of these extraordinary doctors.

The Center’s theme is simple; communication – doctors working together toward a mutual goal. When this goal is reached, all will share in the victory.

The Center’s network of the top seven MS institutions that have established leading, innovative research programs include UC San Francisco, Harvard, Yale, USC, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Oregon Health Sciences University. According to Dr. Stephen Hauser, a leading MS researcher at the University of California at San Francisco, “Nothing like this exists in the nation. We believe that ultimately the mystery of MS will be solved if we can combine our understanding of genetics, pathophysiology, immunology, the environment and therapeutics towards a common goal. No single team of investigators has the expertise to ask these questions in a coordinated fashion. Nancy has brought together different teams of experts to work together as a single unit, without walls. For the first time in history, we have the scientific tools in hand to find the answers to MS.”

It is the clear desire of the Center to fund cutting edge research, which will prevent and eventually cure multiple sclerosis. The Center constantly strives to strengthen this revolutionary concept with new approaches to finding the brightest minds in this field. The Center’s Scientific Advisory Board, spearheaded by Dr. George Eisenbarth at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, reviews proposals and grants, submitted in standard NIH format. In addition to the regular use of high-technology communication tools, researchers of CWW come together to share scientific accomplishments through monthly telephone conference calls, standard scientific advisory meetings and MS symposiums held four times a year.