Reading Time: 5 minutes Yesterday, we were delighted to unveil a new research collaboration that we believe will greatly improve the quality and pace of MND research – not only in understanding the cellular processes that cause motor neurons to degenerate, but also in helping with drug discovery and development. The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Reproducible Antibody Platform (ALS RAP) isn’t…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Long before the latest wave of cellular and molecular biology advances started to give us new information on what was going on at the cellular level in MND, some doctors had observed that if the disease started in one particular part of the body, it would be neighbouring parts that became affected next. This suggested…
Reading Time: 5 minutes I usually travel to London two to three times a month for meetings and lab visits. If I’ve got any length of spare time, I head for what I call my ‘London office’ – aka the British Library. It’s close to Euston station, it’s free (!) it has a nice café for informal meetings and…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Warmest congratulation to Dr Marka van Blitterswijk of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, winner of this year’s Paulo Gontijo Prize in Medicine. The Award is presented to an outstanding young investigator working on ALS/MND, with judging based on the significance of a recent scientific paper published by each applicant, plus an evaluation of the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Whilst the vast majority of MND research happens in the lab, there is also an increasing amount of research activity looking into how best to manage the various symptoms of the disease. There are a lot of unanswered questions as to ‘What Works and What Doesn’t?’ and without a decent level of evidence, it is…
Reading Time: 3 minutes At last year’s Airlie House workshop to develop new ALS/MND Clinical Trial Guidelines the focus was, of course, on MND, but there was also important input and learning from outside the field. One of the most fascinating presentations was from an oncologist who was explaining how detailed genetic analysis of tumours was leading to an understanding…
Reading Time: 2 minutes I firmly believe that the quality of research is only as good as the researcher doing it, which is why the MND Association places a lot of emphasis on providing opportunities to attract, train and retain the brightest and best investigators in the UK and Ireland to develop their careers in MND research. These range…
Reading Time: 2 minutes During Awareness month in June we reported on the work of Dr James Bashford at King’s College London, exploring new ways of measuring muscle fasciculations in people with MND. The results from the one year pilot study have shown a lot of promise, which has led to Dr Bashford recently being awarded a Clinical Research…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Today we announce a new collaboration for a preclinical research study on the diabetes drug liraglutide, in the hope that positive results will lead to a clinical trial in MND. Here’s a little more about the rationale behind the study. The idea that drugs licensed for one disease may have some use in another completely…
Reading Time: 2 minutes A few months ago we wrote an article about the ALS Clinical Trials Workshop which took place in Virginia, USA. Since then the Guidelines Working Groups have been busy turning the large number of issues debated into a first draft of a new set of guidelines. This is open for comment from 1- 31 August. The…
