Reading Time: 4 minutes Our general election campaign for 2015 is featured around communication because we believe that nobody should have to lose their voice to MND. The afternoon session on Friday 5 December during the 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND also focussed on this topic. Around 80-95% of people living with MND will face communication problems as their speech…
Reading Time: 4 minutes The 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND began today in Brussels, Belgium. More than 900 delegates joined the opening session to hear Dr Alfred Sandrock from Biogen Idec’s opening talk. The only proven drug for MND is riluzole. This is the only treatment to have passed all stages of clinical trial testing, showing it to be…
Reading Time: 3 minutes On 4 November, we welcomed two of our funded researchers to our offices in Northampton. Ruxandra Mutihac and Matt Gabel gave us a ‘taste’ of what’s to come for this year’s 25th International Symposium on ALS/MND, by speaking to us about their research. The symposium is the World’s largest MND-specific research conference and is now only two weeks away!
Reading Time: 4 minutes Published in Lancet Neurology on 7 October 2014, Association-funded researcher, Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi based at King’s College London, and an international team of researchers have used a new approach to study the causes of MND. Under the leadership of Prof Neil Pearce, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, researchers have used a mathematical…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Dr Robin Highley from the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), which is based at the University of Sheffield, has written a special ‘guest blog’ about his research and the value of tissue donation. I am a pathologist who recently completed a MND Association/Medical Research Council Lady Edith Wolfson fellowship. During my research fellowship, a student and I…
Reading Time: 3 minutes An international team of researchers, led by MND Association-funded researchers based at King’s College London, have identified mistakes in the TUBA4A gene as a new cause of the rare inherited form of MND. This new MND-causing gene causes the cell’s structure, or skeleton, to break down – resulting in the cell being unable to transport…
Reading Time: 4 minutes On 22 September 2014 Neuralstem announced the results from their long-term follow up of three participants who were involved in their initial phase I safety trial. Here’s what the news means and what may be next for Neuralstem’s stem cell treatment. What is Neuralstem? Neuralstem is the company behind an innovative neural stem cell treatment for…
Reading Time: 3 minutes The ALS #icebucketchallenge, which started in America, has now well and truly hit the UK! The social media craze has seen thousands of people getting involved in raising awareness of ‘ALS’( the most common form of MND), and funds for the Association, by placing a bucket of ice-cold water over their heads. But what happens…
Reading Time: 4 minutes MND Association and Alzheimer’s Research UK-funded researchers from University College London have identified that toxic proteins may cause motor neurones to die in C9orf72 MND and frontotemporal dementia. Published open access in the journal Science on Thursday 7 August, this research explains more about one of the most common forms of inherited MND.
Reading Time: 3 minutes After attending the ENCALS meeting in May I was busy scheduling the ‘blog a day’ in June, which meant I didn’t get chance to actually report on any developments from the meeting. During our ‘blog a day’ we wrote a lot about genetics, in terms of the UK MND Whole Genome Sequencing project and the…
