Reading Time: 2 minutes Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has enabled researchers to create and study living human motor neurones in the lab, derived originally from patient skin cells. This project (our reference 80-970-797) is a collaboration between the labs of Professors Chris Shaw and Jack Price at King’s College in London and Siddharthan Chandran in Edinburgh. It…
Reading Time: 3 minutes This autumn sees an exciting new development in the MND Association’s DNA Bank. Researchers can now use the samples within it to understand why motor neurones die as well as what the triggers are for MND. How the DNA Bank began Beginning in 2003 and running until 2012, approximately 1,500 people with MND, 1,000 healthy…
Reading Time: 5 minutes The MND Association is custodian of the UK MND DNA Bank. Over 3,000 people with MND, carers and family members donated blood samples to the Bank, from which DNA was extracted, ready for use by the MND research community. The logistics of managing, storing and sending out the correct samples for researchers to use is…
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s been six months since the UK MND DNA Bank (DNA Bank) opened its doors to researchers around the world, so what has been happening to all those samples? Dr Lucy Smith, Research Information Administrator at the MND Association, explains: The DNA Bank is the first UK biobank dedicated to MND and has 3000 samples under…
Reading Time: 5 minutes By 2011 the UK motor neurone disease (MND) DNA Bank had collected over 3,000 samples from people living with MND in the UK, their family members and healthy controls. Several years since the first sample was taken, the MND Association can now proudly announce that the UK MND DNA Bank is ‘open for business’ to…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sunday 8 January is not only a celebration of Prof Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, it’s also the date when the MND Association’s DNA bank appeal will be launched on BBC Radio 4. Our DNA bank contains over 3,400 samples from people with MND and their families. By using these samples scientists in this country have…
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’ve been extremely excited about this research finding for a while now and have closely followed the progress of Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi’s publication as it was accepted into the prestigious journal Lancet Neurology. At times this was a rollercoaster journey – one that we were carefully watching from the sidelines with baited breath. The reason why we’re…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Due to the collaboration, hard work and partnerships with people affected by motor neurone disease (MND) who generously take part in research, new pieces of the complex MND puzzle continue to be found. These pieces can come in many forms and one such type of discovery is of the genes that cause MND – in…
