Partial support is requested for a two-week intensive lecture course in 'Pathogenesis of Neuroimmunologic Diseases' , to be offered each summer for three years at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Faculty will consist largely of established younger American investigators who carry on fundamental immunologic or neurophysiologic studies on diseases of the nervous system. The student body is expected to include advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty, medical residents (particularly in neurology and neurosurgery), and a few senior immunologists and neuroscientists. The lectures will describe the application of genetic, molecular, and cell physiologic concepts and techniques in current use in immunology and neurophysiology to the analysis of pathogenesis in several of the better known neurologic diseases thought to have an immunologic basis. These sessions will be supplemented by demonstrations of patients with typical neuroimmunologic disease (e.g. myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis) and of relevant viral or autoimmune models in animals. The MBL is one of the premier teaching institutions of the United States in the realm of molecular and developmental biology and fundamental neurosciences. It is populated each summer by outstanding young scientists attending courses lasting from two to ten weeks. The MBL has embarked on the formation of a Marine Biomedical Institute for Advanced Studies. This course in neuroimmunology would be offered in order to bring more medically oriented scientists to the MBL, and simultaneously, complement the very fundamental science now predominant there with an introduction to high quality disease-oriented research at a very basic level.
