Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) awarded the University of Colorado-Denver a $427,712 Project Grant on March 2, 2026, under the Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders program (CFDA 93.853). The grant funds research to classify and validate disease-associated B cell receptors (BCRs) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The research team will leverage a machine learning language model trained on over 5 million BCR immunoglobulin heavy chain sequences extracted from publicly available RNA sequencing data to identify BCR sequences uniquely associated with MS. The project will validate the model's effectiveness by comparing peripheral BCR repertoires of MS patients against patients with other neuroinflammatory diseases and by expressing selected paired BCR heavy and light chain sequences as recombinant antibodies for functional testing.

Through this 24-month project (concluding February 29, 2028), the research team will determine whether the identified recombinant antibodies bind to central nervous system (CNS) targets including neurons, myelin, glia, and other CNS tissues using multiple analytical methods. The anticipated outputs include validation of the approach's ability to distinguish MS patients from other neuroinflammatory controls and identification of pathogenic antibodies associated with MS. Successful completion is expected to advance diagnostic capabilities for detecting MS and other autoimmune diseases through blood sample analysis and facilitate future study of disease mechanisms across multiple autoimmune conditions.