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The importance of FUS

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It is really quiet in the office today, with a few colleagues out and about for various reasons. As soon as the thought entered my head about having a productive day with no distractions, an email landed in my In Box. Had I seen the research report mentioned in this press release? A quick scan of the release and my thoughts were ‘no’ (I haven’t seen it), ‘how exciting’ and ‘well there goes my quiet afternoon’ in quick succession!

The bottom line of the research is that some MND researchers in Chicago, USA led by Dr Han-Xiang Deng and Professor Teepu Siddique have been able to make a connection between a biochemical pathway recently implicated in the rare, inherited form of MND (known as familial MND) and sporadic MND. They have found clumps of the ‘FUS’ protein in motor neurones of people with familial MND AND in motor neurones of people with sporadic MND too.

One of the keys to understanding what causes motor neurones to die in MND is to understand which proteins are deposited in affected motor neurones. Deposits, or clumps, of proteins are common to many neurodegenerative diseases, the main difference between the diseases is which proteins are found. A protein called TDP-43 was the first protein discovered to be consistently deposited in the motor neurones of people who had MND. The results from this Chicago research group showing that FUS protein accumulates in most cases of people with MND is the second discovery of its kind.

The efforts of many people around the world will now be focussed on confirming these exciting results which take us closer to understanding the causes of MND.

All of these studies have been conducted using the post-mortem brain and spinal cord tissue of those that have donate these tissues for research after their deaths. A big thank you to anyone who has helped this happen for close family and friends. More information on this generous opportunity to help MND research can be found on our website.

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