Abstract: Historically, “big pharma” did most central nervous system drug discovery R&D in-house. Yet, in modern times their “management reductionism” resulted in disappointing pipelines and pharma resided to (late) development, regulatory approval, and marketing (Thong, 2015). This had significant consequences for financing and executing research, resulting in a larger role for funding by governments and patient-organizations and a shift of research to academia (Mazzucato, 2013). Factors that make academia an attractive partner in drug discovery include: (1) their excellence in science; a sine qua non for successful drug discovery; (2) availability of open resources and incubators; (3) increasing interest in translational research, and (4) new educational programs to train drug researchers (Verkman, 2004; ShamasDin and Schimmer, 2015; Schreiber et al., 2021). But drug discovery at academia remains a tall order and we will describe the lessons learned from an ambitious project on multiple sclerosis (MS). Our lab has extensive experience in the MS field and a strong valorization mind-set (Schepers et al., 2023; Tiane et al., 2023). It is crucial to keep searching for novel targets to treat MS, especially progressive MS and myelin repair, for which no cure nor appropriate treatment is currently on the market (Hauser and Cree, 2020). We investigated a novel molecular target: the excitatory amino acid transporter 3 (EAAT3).