Reading Time: 3 minutes We know that in the 5-10% of cases where there is a strong family history of MND, there is likely to be a genetic cause at work, acting like a weight to push the scales in favour of the disease occurring. These gene mutations are hidden somewhere within the 15 billion or so letters of…
Reading Time: 2 minutes A packed room at the 24th International Symposium on ALS/MND was given a fascinating whistle stop tour covering stem cells, robots and cellular garbage clearing, by Dr Steve Finkbeiner of the University of California, as well as a glimpse into the future of developing ‘disease in a dish’ models of MND. Dr Finkbeiner outlined how…
Reading Time: 5 minutes The sun was (uncharacteristically!) shining on Edinburgh last week for a symposium to celebrate the launch of the new Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic. The clinic, which opened to patients earlier this year, was founded following a donation by the author JK Rowling, in memory of her mother, who died from complications related to multiple sclerosis…
Reading Time: 6 minutes There’s a scene in the 1969 film Battle of Britain where Laurence Olivier, who plays the Air Chief Marshal, is in a meeting with his two Vice Marshals. One of them complains that they don’t have enough planes; the other is more concerned with keeping the airfields working. Olivier silences them both by telling them that…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Hot on the heels of ‘Brain Awareness Week’, comes ‘National Science Week’, with the University of Sheffield enthusiastically organising a numerous activities in their week-long Festival of Science and Engineering, including today’s Open Day at the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience (SITraN). This event was to include talks by Dr Chris McDermott and Prof Pam…
Reading Time: 3 minutes It could be easy to assume that one motor neurone is pretty much like another, but a series of presentations on Thursday clearly showed that we need to be a little more sophisticated in our thinking. Dr Hynek Wichterle (Columbia University) discussed how in the developing embryo, there are distinct regional subtypes of motor neurones…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Growing up in a seaside town in the 1980s led to me spending a lot of my “formative years” in the local amusement arcades, playing iconic video games like Space Invaders (at which I was average) and Asteroids (I was the kid to beat!). One game I never got the hang of was Pac Man,…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Delegates to last weekend’s ENCALS (European Network for the Cure of ALS) meeting in Dublin were met with uncharacteristic hot and sunny weather – enjoyed by the numerous Stag and Hen parties wandering the city centre, but not by the 200 people ensconced in the impressive, new Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College, from 8am…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sadie’s recent post on the emerging partnership between Peakdale Molecular and the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience prompted me to say a little about last month’s Drug Discovery Workshop, held in Washington DC and organised our friends at the ALS Association. I was fortunate to be invited along to this workshop, which brought together over 100…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Yesterday’s announcement by the biotechnology company Trophos SA of the lack of effectiveness of their compound olesoxime adds to the long list of drugs that have failed to live up to their early promise in the lab. It’s a story that’s common across the world of neurodegenerative disease, including common conditions such as Parkinson’s disease…
