By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS ó David Murdock, billionaire owner of Dole Food Co. and founder of the N.C. Research Campus, will make an announcement Thursday about multiple sclerosis.
Prominent Charlotte businessman Herman Stone, an advocate for multiple sclerosis research, is expected to attend the event at the Research Campus.
Phyllis Beaver, marketing director for campus developer Castle & Cooke North Carolina, confirmed the event as a “special announcement” but said she could not give details until next week.
Stone, who owns Consolidated Theatres, has two children with multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system that attacks the brain and spinal cord. There is no known cure.
Duke University’s long-term medical research study, which is based at the Research Campus and named for Murdock, recently added multiple sclerosis to the list of diseases that researchers will study, including liver disease, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and cancer.
Dr. Simon Gregory, a scientist for the Duke Center for Human Genetics and the MURDOCK Study, studies multiple sclerosis. He also serves as an interim laboratory director for the David H. Murdock Research Institute in Kannapolis.
Gregory said he would attend the event Thursday.
Murdock donated $35 million to Duke in 2007 to launch the MURDOCK Study, which stands for Measurement to Understand Reclassification of Disease of Cabarrus/Kannapolis.
Duke is one of eight universities with a presence on the Research Campus, a $1.5 billion biotechnology complex built on the ruins of an old textile mill that Murdock once owned.