Dr. James J. Marriott
Assistant Professor, Section of Neurology
Dr. Marriott attended medical school at Queen’s University and completed his neurology residency at the University of Ottawa in 2007. He completed a three-year Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Fellow at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto in 2010 and a Master’s of Science degree through the University of Toronto in 2011. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Section of Neurology at the University of Manitoba and an attending neurologist in the Winnipeg Multiple Sclerosis clinic. His main research interest is in multiple sclerosis clinical trials.
Learn more about Dr. Marriott
How did you become interested in MS research? What inspires you to continue advancing research in this field?
As an undergraduate, I was interested in both neurology and immunology and MS was a good fit for these two interests. The need to continue to advance MS care and understand how to prevent and manage symptoms drives my ongoing research interests.
What do you enjoy most about doing research and what are some of the challenges you face?
I enjoy being able to involve persons with MS directly in research; be it a clinical trial of a potential therapy or in a clinical research study to learn more about the impact of MS. One challenge is balancing the impetus to do all as much as you can with the practicalities of developing a research program; there a lot of interesting things to explore but you have to move systematically and built a research platform over time.
Describe the importance and level of collaboration in your research?
Collaboration is very important as it enables researchers to share resources and use each other's expertise. A current example would be the Canadian mesenchymal stem cell trial, which is part of a global consortium of researchers acting together to study a promising potential treatment approach.
How important is the support from the MS Society in enabling you to conduct research?
Support from the MS Society has been instrumental in funding all aspects of my research; both clinical trials and epidemiological studies.
If you could ask any question(s) to a person living with MS that would help you design your study, what would it be?
I would ask what s/he would consider a meaningful benefit, or an outcome they would be interested in, so that particular endpoint could be incorporated into the study design.