YAMSA -Young Alliance Against Multiple System Atrophy

The Young Alliance Against Multiple System Atrophy, YAMSA in short, was founded by 12 students at a summer school hosted by the German National Academic Foundation ("Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes", which is the largest and oldest fellowship program for students in Germany) in 2016. Our group works interdisciplinary and combines various subjects: medical students and doctors (majority), psychology, biomedicine, chemistry and bioentrepreneurship. Since November 2018 we are also a registered charitable association. We see a lot of potential in MSA-research: it can act as a model system for other alpha-synucleopathies which don't draw a lot of attention by the public or researchers. We pursue several goals: - Carrying out a multi-centre research projects about MSA - Promoting MSA research - Promoting awareness and distributing information about MSA (e.g. via our homepage) - Promoting the creation of a database of German-speaking MSA patients who are willing to participate in future studies - Creating contacts between MSA-researchers (especially young researchers) - Promoting the foundation of an association of German-speaking MSA patients