A Five Year Research Summary

January, 2010

The Johns Hopkins Project RESTORE was established in August 2004 as a collaborative multidisciplinary effort to “advance our understanding of and develop new therapies for neuroimmunologic disorders.

RESTORE is an acronym for REcover, STOp and REgenerate, emphasizing the three principles underlying RESTORE:

RECOVER

• Function
• From acute attacks
• From illness

STOP

• Progression of disease
• Progression of disability 

REGENERATE

• Nerve cells
• Myelin

In practice, this has meant forging collaborations and carrying out innovative research designed to profoundly enhance our understanding of neuroimmunologic disorders and to translate basic science findings into clinical therapies.  By developing new treatments for neuroimmunologic disorders, we seek to Restore Hope, Restore Function, and Restore Lives to patients and families with these disorders.

Project RESTORE exists within one of the premiere medical research institutions and hospitals in the world, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an institution with an unequalled commitment to biomedical research.  Project RESTORE has been so successful because of the expertise, resources and commitment at Johns Hopkins.

• In 2009, for the 19th year in a row, U.S. News and World Report recognized The Johns Hopkins Hospital as the “Best of the Best” in its annual rankings;
• The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is the #1 recipient of National Institutes of Health research funding in the country;
• Johns Hopkins Neurology is consistently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as a top two neurology program;
• Fourteen Nobel prizes in Medicine have been awarded to Johns Hopkins-trained scientists;
• Johns Hopkins has four of the twenty most cited neuroscientists nationally; no other institution has more than one;
• Johns Hopkins Medicine is a $3.5 billion enterprise with over 3,100 faculty members, 696 house staff trainees, 970 fellows, and 22,000 staff and nearly 1,650 post-doctoral fellows;
• More than 1.9 million patients come to Johns Hopkins each year from around the world for state-of-the-art and experimental therapies.

Johns Hopkins is committed to the promise of restorative therapies and specifically the use of stem cells to treat human disease, having established the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cellular Engineering (ICE) which carries out basic research aimed at defining the biological principles that guide differentiation and function of stem cells.

We stated at the inception of RESTORE, that, “at the end of five years, we expect to have dramatically improved our understanding of neuroimmunologic disorders and to have initiated clinical trials testing novel treatments based on this understanding.”   

We have met and exceeded these goals thanks to the tireless work of the scientists and clinicians at Johns Hopkins, and to the guidance and support of the Board of Ambassadors.   Below, you will see examples of some of the work done at the Johns Hopkins Project RESTORE.