An estimated 200 Americans are diagnosed with Mutiple Sclerosis every week. Brian Cole knows what that feels like. The Wake Forest man was diagnosed with the disease 14 years ago.

Like most Multiple Sclerosis patients, Cole's disease is relapsing and remitting, meaning it comes and goes. He is able to keep his symptoms at bay with medication.

"The only medications for M.S. right now are injections," Cole said. "So for me that meant...an inch and a half needle that you stick in your leg."

There are only six approved drugs on the market for Multiple Scleroris. Cole is currently participating in a clinical trial for a new oral medication. But developing new drugs is literally a process of trial and error. Four out of five new drugs in clinical trials for M.S. fail.

Dr. Tim Coetzee is the director of Fast Forward, a program of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society that is working to get more drugs on the market by funding research in small biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

"We can't change the rate at which things fail, but what we can do is try to create more opportunities so that we have 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 drugs in development," he said. "A lot of the innovation that happens in MS takes place in young, startup companies like the ones right here in the Triangle region."

Fast Forward depends on donations to fill the pipeline with new drugs for M.S. This year, it is making $3 million in funding available to researchers. And since today's medications can only slow the progression of the disease, patients like Cole are optimistic that more research will bring progress toward a cure.

"I'm very blessed in the fact that I really don't have to think about it every day," he said. "But it's still always there. It's a chronic disease that's not going to go away."