A world-renowned multiple sclerosis researcher, consulted by a dozen La Plata County residents with the autoimmune disease who travel to Denver to see him, is scheduled to speak Friday at the Durango Public Library.

Dr. Timothy Vollmer, with the Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center, will describe the latest advances in multiple sclerosis research, treatment and therapy. Vollmer will take questions after his presentation.

Vollmer’s presentation is held in conjunction with the Colorado Trail Jamboree, a bicycling fundraiser for the center.

The sixth annual outing is scheduled Saturday and Sunday. Some participants take two days to ride from Molas Pass to Durango on the Colorado Trail. Others make a race of it by covering the distance in one day.

“Dr. Vollmer is one of, if not the leading MS researcher in the United States and probably the world,” Lars Enggren, a board member of the Southwest Colorado Multiple Sclerosis Society, said Friday.

“He comes armed to the teeth with information,” Enggren said. “His opinions are highly researched.”

The visit marks the third year the center has taken its Conversations on MS to rural areas of the state, center executive director Karen Wenzel said.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that damages the insulation of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It’s the leading cause and second-leading cause, respectively, of disability in young women and young men.

Wenzel said advances in diagnosing and treating multiple sclerosis are moving at lightning speed.

“The first generation of therapy in the 1990s was only 32 percent effective in slowing the disability,” Wenzel said. “Now we have a whole new generation of medications crashing onto the shore.

“They work in all new ways. Therapies are rationally designed because we understand the immune system better and have more accurate road maps to target dysfunctional processes.”

Vollmer’s next push, Wenzel said, is to develop a vaccine.

“We’ve been slowing the progress of the disease,” Wenzel said. “Now we want to stop it, eliminate it.”

Vollmer is the medical director at the Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center, a faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and co-director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Multiple Sclerosis Care and Research.

Kevin Walter of Pagosa Springs said anyone with questions about multiple sclerosis should hear Vollmer’s talk.

“There are a lot of changes in multiple sclerosis that are happening quickly,” said Walter, 51, whose MS has been in remission for 19 months. “Dr. Vollmer is the man with the answers.”

Walter said he’s battled multiple sclerosis for five years, although doctors think he’s probably had the disease for nearly twice that length of time.

daler@durangoherald.com