Earlier this year, we asked our amazing community to once more get behind our Stop MS Appeal to help find treatments for everyone with MS. Read about the appeal here. We were delighted to introduce Octopus, our revolutionary mega-trial for progressive MS. Find out more about Octopus here.
The response has been incredible – our Octopus announcement has helped to raise an amazing £170,000 (and counting!) towards our Stop MS Appeal. You may remember that we’re aiming to raise £100million, and thanks to our generous supporters we’ve already been able to secure over half of this.
Sharing the news
As well as sharing the news with our supporters by post, we launched Octopus on our website and social media channels. There’s a whole range of brilliant content including blogs from inspiring researchers, like Sue Pavitt, who’s been working behind the scenes to make the trial a reality. Read about Sue's work here. And you can check out a film here from Fiona, Reggie and Holly, all living with MS, sharing how a trial like Octopus is bringing them hope for the future.
The launch of Octopus was featured in both national and local news throughout May. Dr Emma Gray, our Assistant Director of Research, was interviewed about the trial on Sky News. Viewers also heard from Ashley, living with progressive MS, about what the trial could mean for him.
Our sixth Annual Stop MS Lecture was also a huge success. We were thrilled to have lead investigators of the Octopus trial, Max Parmar and Jeremy Chataway, delivering the lecture online this year. An incredible 394 people tuned in, with attendees from as far afield as Greece, France, Italy and America.
And there’s plenty more to come…
Keep your eyes peeled for news on #TeamStopMS and find out how you can get involved by visiting our website. And to help spread the word, we’ll be launching a promotional video featuring some famous faces.
We’ll be bringing you more news throughout 2021 as we continue getting ready for Octopus. We hope to announce the first drugs to be tested and provide an update on recruitment later in the year.
