The Symposium - a grantee's perspective

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The 24th International Symposium on ALS/MND is now only one week away! We’re busy making final preparations and getting ready to report from the event, whilst researchers around the world are packing their suitcases, finishing off their posters and tweaking their presentations.

Janine Kirby

But, what is it like to attend the symposium? What do researchers gain from attending? One of our grantees, and member of our Biomedical Research Advisory Panel (BRAP), Dr Janine Kirby (Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience) will be attending this year’s event. Dr Kirby has kindly agreed to explain why she attends the symposium and what researchers gain by attending this prestigious event:

“The symposium gives you the opportunity to surround yourself with the latest motor neurone disease research from across the world in one location. From advances in genetics to the latest healthcare research the symposium really does have it all!

“It also allows you to catch up with friends and colleagues, discuss on-going and future collaborations, and stimulates research ideas which form the next funding applications. It is highly informative, exhausting and fun!”

Dr Kirby will be reporting via our peer-to-peer blog ReCCoB from the symposium and will also be tweeting using the hashtag #alssymp (Mo the meerkat will also be tweeting too)!

Martin Turner

Lady Edith Wolfson Fellow, Dr Martin Turner, based at the University Oxford, will also be attending this year’s symposium to find out the latest developments in MND research:

“I am really looking forward to this meeting in Milan. Ten years since the meeting was last there, so much has changed. “There are now several major genetic pathways to explore, not just one, and multiple models to test new treatments (including stem cell motor neurons derived from skin).

“We are undoubtedly slowing down the ‘MND supertanker’, and can start to see how we might turn it around for the first time.”