Tanner Foundation names its 1st Multiple Sclerosis Scholar

The Tanner Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides educational opportunities to people with multiple sclerosis, their family members and health care professionals, has named its first Multiple Sclerosis Scholar to study the disease at UAB.

The foundation is named after Hoover resident Anthony Tanner, a former health care executive who is battling MS.

The group chose Ashlyn Anderson, a fourth-year doctoral student at UAB, as the 2020 Tanner Foundation Multiple Sclerosis Scholar. Anderson started the UAB graduate biomedical sciences immunology program in 2016 after graduating from Roanoke University in Salem, Virginia, with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Anderson was named as the Tanner Scholar during the Tanner Foundation inaugural cocktail dinner to raise money for MS research at The Club in Birmingham in February. Anderson said she was on a pre-med track in college until she started an internship for a laboratory at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, and that changed her focus in graduate school to immunology.

Mary Miller, executive director of the Tanner Foundation, said she hopes the research being done will help patients in the future.

“The Tanner Scholar will build up more opportunities for research in the MS community as disease states, like MS and ALS, do not have a lot of money in their research departments,” Miller said. “We hope this $35,000 gift will help MS patients around the state of Alabama as Ashlyn does her research, and we hope to eventually do a Tanner Scholar in ALS and Parkinson’s disease in the future.”

Anderson said she looks forward to her research.

“I am very excited and honored to receive this award,” she said. “I am looking forward to utilizing a wide variety of experimental techniques to further investigate the role of STAT4 in inflammatory diseases. Many current therapies for multiple sclerosis have detrimental effects on the immune system as a whole, leaving the patient’s immune system compromised. Further understanding the role of STAT4 in MS will hopefully lead to more targeted therapeutic options that do not weaken the patient’s immune system.”

STAT4 is a gene that is associated with an increased risk of MS and autoimmune diseases. Anderson said her research will use various models to alter STAT4 expressions in Th17 cells (which drive autoimmune diseases) to understand the contribution of STAT4 in promoting inflammation driven by Th17 cells.

Anderson will present her research at bi-weekly meetings and attend local MS and autoimmune symposiums to present her research as well.

She said being at UAB has been great, with the help of her mentor.

“It is really a privilege to be at UAB doing MS research,” Anderson said. “UAB is an amazing, collaborative environment where everyone wants you to succeed. I have an amazing mentor, Dr. Laurie Harrington, who really supports me and encourages me to explore my interests in the field of neuroimmunology. I definitely would not be here without her.”

She will try to find information and may be even a cure during her time researching MS and autoimmune diseases, hoping to make an impact like Tanner did.