Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease that impacts the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves, and has been diagnosed in over 2.3 million people worldwide. The exact cause of MS is currently unknown, but we do know that something triggers the immune system to attack the CNS. The resulting damage to myelin, the protective layer insulating wire-like nerve fibers, disrupts signals to and from the brain. There is an urgent need to develop a therapeutic agent to slow down the progression of MS.

We have developed at NETRI compartmentalized microfluidic device architectures with enhanced fluidic isolation to co-culture different cell types, as oligodendrocytes and neurons, to understand the cause of MS.