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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A leading multiple sclerosis researcher is setting up shop in the Charlotte area.

Simon Gregory is helping to staff and stock a genetics lab at the David H. Murdock Research Center in Kannapolis.

He’s hoping to build on the discovery he and several colleagues made two years ago. Gregory found that a gene on the fifth chromosome plays a role in MS. Up until that time only the sixth chromosome had been thought to be involved in the nerve disease.

Gregory is excited about the new lab because it’s stocked with equipment that is expected to make research easier.

“Because we’ve got these technologies available to us here in the core lab we are able to do types of experiments we only dreamed of before so it’s given us new opportunities for carrying out research,” Gregory said.

One experiment the Australia native hopes to do is to take a closer look at the gene he believes is significant on chromosome five. He wants to compare the differences in DNA that show up in multiple sclerosis patients and the same DNA in the general population.

It will be slow and tedious work but Gregory thinks it will be instrumental in moving forward the fight against multiple sclerosis.

“If we can find out how that gene….what’s the role it plays in the immune cell response we can potentially think about looking at therapies we can think about looking at other genes which might be implicated.”

Gregory is an assistant professor at the Center for Human Genetics at Duke University. He expects to recruit patients there as well as possibly through the Murdock Center in Kannapolis.