​J.K. Rowling lost her mother to multiple sclerosis at 45; in 2010, she donated £10 million for an Edinburgh research clinic in her mother’s name, and the facility now helps thousands of people with brain conditions

J.K. Rowling opened the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic in memory of her mother, who died of multiple sclerosis. The clinic focuses on research and treatment of various neurological diseases, including multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. The funding aims to attract world-class researchers to develop new therapies and potentially find a cure. It has already hosted numerous clinical appointments and research projects since its inception.

Anne Rowling died of complications from multiple sclerosis in 1990. She was only 45. Her daughter, J.K. Rowlingwas not famous yet, and the Harry Potter books were still years from publication.Anne had suffered from the disease for 15 years before her death. For J.K. Rowling, who was just a teenager at the time, her mother’s death was an ‘enormous shock’, as her mother ‘always seemed very young’. “She was very fit, she was a non-smoker, non-drinker, and I say all of this because of course then for her to be diagnosed at 35 with an illness that would kill her was just the most enormous shock to us and everyone who knew her.”The loss has shaped one of the author’s series’ central themes. In August 2010, when Rowling turned 45 herself, she donated £10 million to the University of Edinburgh in memory of her mother. Today, the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic combines patient care with medical research, treating people with brain conditions including multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease and early-onset dementia, while working to develop and trial new treatments for neurological diseases.

Cure for a ‘very Scottish disease’

Rowling had lived in Edinburgh for years and wrote the Harry Potter books there. The city had given her so much, and she wanted to give something meaningful back. While talking about her mother’s disease, she said it was a ‘very Scottish disease’. More than 150,000 people live with multiple sclerosis (MS) in the UK. In fact, roughly one in 400 people in the UK have MS, according to the latest data from the MS Society. Scotland has one of the highest rates in the world. So donating to research and treatment only made sense to her.“I cannot think of anything more important, or of more lasting value, than to help the university attract world-class minds in the field of neuroregeneration, to build on its long and illustrious history of medical research and, ultimately, to seek a cure for a very Scottish disease,” J.K. Rowling said after the donation.The clinic was not her first investment in the field. It followed the Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research, set up at the university in 2007, which had also received her support.

Research and treatment under one roof

The clinic opened in October 2013, inaugurated by the Princess Royal, chancellor of the university. It sits at the Little France site beside the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Rowling said she was ‘moved and elated’ to see it finished.The idea was simple: the doctors and researchers had to work under one roof. NHS Lothian runs specialist clinics in the building, and university researchers work alongside them, so what doctors see in an appointment can shape what scientists test next. The clinic focuses on conditions such as MS, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease and early-onset dementias. The goal was to find treatments that slow progression and, eventually, to stop and reverse it.Access works in two tiers. Clinical appointments are limited to people within NHS Lothian. But the research is wider: people across Scotland can take part in studies.“Neurological diseases will always be complicated, and we are under no illusions about the scale of the task that lies ahead. We are very aware that this letter will sit inside a time capsule alongside the stories of patients who are facing real, daily struggles with diseases like MS and MND. In fifty years’ time, however, we believe that a diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease will no longer be a life (and death) sentence,” Professor Siddharthan Chandran, Director of the Clinic, said in a release at the time.The research facility is a source of hope for thousands of MS patients. “I know that the clinic will make a difference. I don’t know if it will be large or small, short- or long-term, related to MS or another condition. The fact that it will make a difference is really what matters…” Elizabeth Vokurka, who was diagnosed with MS, said, as mentioned in the ‘time capsule’ installed at the entrance of the Anne Rowling Clinic.Since then, the clinic has held tens of thousands of clinical and research appointments and conducted numerous research projects and trials.