Newsletter February 2021
An Update from Chris Armstrong, Director, Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration The Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration is the fifth and newest OMF funded collaborative research center. After making
Open Medicine Foundation Australia Ltd (OMFAU) is a regional branch entity of Open Medicine Foundation, and is part of the largest, concerted worldwide nonprofit effort to diagnose, treat and find a cure for ME/CFS.
OMF Australia is a Public Ancillary Fund, established for the purpose of promoting and funding research into chronic complex diseases, and supports the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration.
Established in 2020, the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration is directed by Christopher W. Armstrong, PhD.
“We are tremendously grateful for the generous support from Emerge Australia, our Australian partner. Emerge Australia is a national organization providing information, support, and advocacy for people with ME/CFS — giving hope and help to more than 250,000 Australians living with the disease,” Linda Tannenbaum, OMF Founder & CEO/President.
The Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration seeks to characterize the unifying biological pathways of ME/CFS that relate to the shared disease experience between patients while also understanding each patient’s unique biology that creates variation in disease experience and severity.
Chris Armstrong, PhD, was OMF’s Science Liaison and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne, and has been involved with researching ME/CFS for over a decade.
Dr. Armstrong is most well known for his research using metabolomics to observe biochemical alterations in ME/CFS patients. He began his work in this field at the University of Melbourne, beginning a PhD project to apply metabolomics to study (ME/CFS) and published his first metabolomics study on blood and urine in 2015.
Since then Chris has set up collaborative efforts to apply metabolomics to immunological experiments on ME/CFS, observing how metabolism may relate to immune cell function. He has also focused on longitudinal research in ME/CFS while looking to extend metabolic capabilities across the field of ME/CFS to help collate different patient group
An Update from Chris Armstrong, Director, Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration The Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration is the fifth and newest OMF funded collaborative research center. After making
TRIPLE GIVING TUESDAY OMF LAUNCHES TODAY With big news from Australia! Welcome to the first day of our 2020 Triple Giving Tuesday Campaign! I’m thrilled
Open Medicine Foundation is excited to announce that our Science Liaison, Christopher Armstrong, PhD has received a grant of $784,000 for ME / CFS research from the
The study aims to establish an analytical workflow for outlier analysis in ME/CFS and develop a software program to rapidly identify these potential anomalies.
The study aims to establish a condensed personalized research protocol that can be used to characterize ME/CFS in individual patients as it pertains to all their unique biological aspects, interacting with a complex chronic disease.
This study’s goal is to broadly evaluate B cell subsets, metabolism, viability, receptors, and antibodies in people with ME/CFS.
This proposal seeks to understand pathological mechanisms of pediatric ME/CFS (13 to 18 years old).
This project aims to test the nitrogen hypothesis, which is that damaging, nitrogen-containing by-products of energy metabolism accumulate more readily in the cells of ME/CFS patients.
To carry out these ambitious projects, Dr. Armstrong is establishing networks and collaborations extending to USA, UK, Sweden, and other Australian institutions.
University of Melbourne, Australia
Christopher Armstrong, PhD
Paul Gooley, PhD
Neil McGregor, PhD
Natalie Thomas, PhD
Kathy Huang
David Ascher, PhD
Elisha Josev, PhD
Sarah Knight, PhD
Adam Scheinberg, MD
David Stroud, PhD
Stanford University, USA
Ronald Davis, PhD
Robert Phair, PhD
Laurel Crosby, PhD
Julie Wilhelmy
Amit Saha, PhD
Layla Cervantes
Anna Okumu
Mike Snyder, PhD
Ryan Kellogg, PhD
Jaime Seltzer
Uppsala University, Sweden
Jonas Bergquist, MD, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital, USA
Ronald Tompkins, MD, ScD
Wenzhong Xiao, PhD
University of Montreal, Canada
Alain Moreau, PhD
Open Medicine Foundation
Linda Tannenbaum
UC San Diego, USA
Robert Naviaux, MD, PhD
University of Alabama Birmingham, USA
Jarred Younger, PhD
University College London, UK
Jo Cambridge, PhD
La Trobe University, Australia
Sarah Annesley, PhD
Paul Fisher, PhD
Daniel Missailidis
Australian National University, Australia
Brett Lidbury, PhD
Alice Richardson, PhD
Monash University, Australia
Joanne Fielding, PhD
Meaghan Clough, PhD
Macquarie University, Australia
Gilles Guillemin, PhD
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Averting a second pandemic:
Open Medicine Foundation leads groundbreaking international study of
Long COVID’s conversion to ME/CFS
AGOURA HILLS, CALIF. — Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is leading a large-scale international collaborative study investigating the potential conversion of Post-Acute Sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection — more commonly known as Long COVID or Post-COVID Syndrome — to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a chronic, life-altering disease with no known cause, diagnostic test or FDA approved treatments available.
Up to 2.5 million people in the U.S. alone suffer from ME/CFS; the COVID-19 pandemic could at least double that number. An estimated 35 percent of Americans who had COVID-19 have failed to fully recover several months after infection, prompting many to call it “a potential second pandemic.”
OMF recognized a familiar health crisis emerging, one with eerie similarities to ME/CFS. This crisis presented a unique opportunity to understand how a viral infection — in this case COVID-19 — may develop into ME/CFS in some patients. The goal is to find targeted treatments for ME/CFS patients and ultimately prevent its onset in people infected with SARS-CoV-2 or other infections.
The federal government is only now investing in Post-COVID research, with no focus on its connection to ME/CFS. OMF has already engaged researchers for the largest-scale study of its kind, solely supported by private donors who have contributed over one million dollars to date. When fully funded, the five million dollar, three-year study will be conducted across the globe at OMF funded Collaborative Research Centers, led by some of the world’s top researchers and ME/CFS experts.
BACKGROUND
In a significant percentage of patients, infections preceded their development of ME/CFS. For example, according to the CDC about one in ten infected with Epstein-Barr virus, Ross River virus, or Coxiella burnetti develop symptoms that meet the criteria for ME/CFS.
THE STUDY
The ability to follow the development of ME/CFS from a known viral infection is unprecedented to date and crucial to researchers’ understanding of the disease. The focus of this study is to find the biological differences between persons returning to good health after COVID-19 and persons who remained ill more than six months after infection and developed ME/CFS. Understanding these alterations in key pathways can lead to groundbreaking discoveries including new biomarkers, drug targets, and prevention and treatment strategies.
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About Open Medicine Foundation
Established in 2012, Open Medicine Foundation leads the largest, concerted worldwide nonprofit effort to diagnose, treat, and prevent ME/CFS and related chronic, complex diseases such as Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Post COVID. OMF adds urgency to the search for answers by driving transformational philanthropy into global research. We have raised over $28 Million from private donors and facilitated and funded the establishment of six prestigious ME/CFS Collaborative Research Centers around the world. To learn more, visit www.omf.ngo.
CONTACT:
Heather Ah San
Development and Communications Manager
1-650-242-8669