Reading Time: 2 minutes Background to C9orf72 toxicity We know that damage to C9orf72 (both the gene and the protein it makes) is a crucial step in why some people get MND and why some people get frontotemporal dementia. There are three possible reasons why C9orf72 is toxic. 1) the way the gene is damaged alters how it normally…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Mistakes in a gene known as ALS5, or spatacsin, cause a rare form of inherited MND that develops at a much earlier age than most other forms of the disease. Under supervision from Dr Cahir O’Kane, MND Association funded PhD student Alex Patto has been using fruit flies to understand how mistakes in spatacsin cause…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Dr Frank Hirth is one of the world’s leading fruit fly MND researchers. Based at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, he has been working on an Association-funded project developing a C9orf72 fruit fly model of MND. Here we mark the end of this project, and report on what the…
Reading Time: 2 minutes June is MND Awareness Month and this year our campaign is featured around the theme ‘VOICE’. Awareness month is our opportunity to raise awareness of MND, making society better informed about the disease. Here in the Research Development team, we are using our global research voice to raise awareness on our MND Research blog. Our…
Reading Time: 3 minutes The MND Association has funded a number of research projects in the laboratory of Dr Frank Hirth at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. His area of expertise is in using fruit flies to understand how motor neurones die in MND. There is an opportunity to read a summary of some of his work…
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is a very exciting time for us. We are again in the middle of another bumper grants round with 23 full applications received. We have received applications from researchers already known to us, new and international researchers, allowing us to further widen our researcher network. Full applications give a detailed plan of what the…
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 2011 an international team of scientists, including three MND Association-funded researchers, identified the elusive C9orf72 gene located on Chromosome 9. Since this ground-breaking discovery, researchers from around the world have been trying to find a way to open-up and reveal more about this MND-causing gene. Determined to get inside and unravel the secrets behind…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Although millions of years of evolution separate humans from insects, a tiny fruit fly called Drosophila melanogaster has been one of the most extensively studied organisms for more than a century, leading to many advances in research. But why are flies so useful? And can we really learn anything from them? Why fly? It is…
