Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a highly heterogeneous disease with respect to pathology, treatment response and particularly disease progression. While some patients may develop severe disability within few years, others may never experience significant impairment. Recently, several potent therapies have been developed, which seem to impact on progression of disease when administered early. Unfortunately, the most effective drugs also have a more serious adverse profile, and may cause life threatening side effects. To overcome this dilemma, biomarkers for early diagnosis, prediction of progression and treatment response need to be developed to facilitate individualized treatment and faster development of new therapies. Untangling the different aspects of heterogeneity by identifying reliable biomarkers to phenotype the individual MS patient will require a joint effort of many centers to establish a Germany-wide network for biomarker discovery. A platform will be established that involves a prospective cohort study linked to well-defined biobanking and centralized genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic efforts. Facilitated by core projects addressing the areas of “antibody biomarkers”, “therapy response markers”, “MS heterogeneity”, “MRI standardization” and “biosignal analysis” the platform will develop and provide a rich source also for preclinical and health services research. This will facilitate rapid translation of new findings across the platforms, suited to improve diagnosis and individualized treatment of MS in daily practice.