JK Rowling has made a £10m donation to Edinburgh University, to set up a new research clinic for multiple sclerosis patients.

The Harry Potter creator hopes the funding will help attract top level experts to the new centre, where patients will be at the heart of research to improve outcomes for sufferers.

The facility is to be named after the author’s mother Anne, who died of MS at the age of 45.

The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic will aim to find treatments that could slow progression of the disease, with a view to eventually stopping and reversing it.

Work at the clinic will also provide insight into other degenerative neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Motor Neurone Disease, which like MS, are progressive and incurable.

Speaking following the funding announcement on Tuesday, Ms Rowling said: “I have supported research into the cause and treatment of Multiple Sclerosis for many years now, but when I first saw the proposal for this clinic, I knew that I had found a project more exciting, more innovative, and, I believe, more likely to succeed in unravelling the mysteries of MS than any other I had read about or been asked to fund.

“I am incredibly impressed by the calibre of clinicians and researchers that Edinburgh has already managed to attract to make this project a reality, and I truly believe that it is set to become a world centre for excellence in the field of regenerative neurology.

“The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic will be mould-breaking in the way that it places patients at the heart of the research and treatment process.

“While Multiple Sclerosis will be at the heart of the research initiative, people with the many other diseases caused by neurodegeneration are likely to benefit from discoveries made here.”

The new clinic follows the creation of the Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research at the University in 2007, which has also received support from the Harry Potter author.

The funding for the new centre is the single largest donation the author has given to a charitable cause, and the largest single gift ever received by the university.

Edinburgh University Principal, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea, said: “This exceptionally generous donation will provide great help in the worldwide effort to improve treatments for multiple sclerosis.

“Work at the clinic will build on the already existing important research strengths in neurodegenerative disorders at the University, which benefit very considerably from our close partnership with NHS Lothian.”

MS sufferer Lesley Jamie was 24-years-old when she was diagnosed. Now, 35, she has been in a wheelchair since 2006 and hopes the new centre will help shed some light on why MS has had the effect it has on her.

Miss Jamie, from Edinburgh, said: “This clinic is completely different and hopefully it will help patients by really looking at their condition. The prevalence of multiple sclerosis is huge in Scotland, so it makes sense to have the clinic here. Hopefully it will help us understand why this condition actually happens and effects everyone differently.”

Scotland has one of the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in the world, with some 10,500 people with the condition. There are around 100,000 sufferers across the UK.