Author: Research Information Team

The MND Association’s vision is a world free from MND. Realising this vision means investing more in research, further developing partnerships with the research community, funding bodies and industry, while ensuring that advances in understanding and treating MND are communicated as quickly and effectively as possible.

Reading Time: 5 minutes "New drug reduces risk of death by 50%"

You may have seen this type of headline in news articles reporting on the outcome of clinical trials. Reading this headline can lead people to believe a potential drug is highly beneficial and has a real impact. However, it is important to delve a little deeper into the meaning of ‘risk of death’, the raw data behind it, and how it should be considered alongside other outcome measures of a trial to fully determine how effective a drug might be.

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Reading Time: 4 minutes In our brains, specific areas control the movement of different body parts (see image below). As we know, MND is a complex disease with a lot of variation between individuals who are affected. For example, symptoms may start in different body parts for different individuals. Understanding why this happens may help us predict the disease onset site or progression across the body in the future.

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Reading Time: 5 minutes Hi, my name is Avril Mc Tague. I am undertaking a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland as part of the Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research Advancing Neurological care in a Digital Age (MIRANDA) doctoral award programme. This is funded by the Health Research Board in Ireland. I was one of five symposium communication ambassadors at last year’s international symposium.

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A graphic showing the photos of our Symposium Communications Ambassadors

Reading Time: 7 minutes Each year at the Symposium, there is a huge amount of research presented on a range of topics from across the globe. With the Symposium returning to an in-person event this year, we are keen to increase the number of updates we share for those not able to attend, including people living with and affected by MND.

To help us do this, we have launched a new Symposium Communications Ambassador Programme so we can bring more of the research from the Symposium to non-scientific audiences. This programme was open for applications from early career researchers working in MND, who were interested in helping us shine a light on MND research happening across the world. This year we have 5 early career researchers taking part in the Programme, who will gain experience and new skills in communicating research to different audiences. Before, during and after the Symposium our Ambassador’s will be helping us to share the latest research with the MND community.

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A picture of two spiral proteins

Reading Time: 4 minutes My name is Dr Hannah Smith, and I’m a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. My project is supervised by Professor Tom Gillingwater, and my work is funded by MND Scotland. My current research focuses on comparing healthy motor neurons and those with MND/ALS, specifically focusing on early changes to the cellular machinery and how the motor neurons produce the proteins they need to function. I’ll discuss the specifics of that, and why we are interested in finding out this information, in the next section.

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A robot arm with finger pointed to a brain and a human arm with finger pointed to the same brain

Reading Time: 4 minutes My name is Florence and I’m doing a PhD in artificial intelligence (AI) enabled healthcare at University College London. My research is specifically investigating how AI techniques can be used to improve the prediction of how quickly somebody’s disease will progress in motor neurone disease.

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A motor neuron with other cells around it in the background

Reading Time: 5 minutes My current work focuses on looking at the cell types that are affected in MND and how they impact each other. Motor neurons, the main cell type affected in MND, connect our brains and muscles. This connection is what allows us to move. In MND, these cells start to die, which is what leads to progressive paralysis. But motor neurons aren’t the only cell types affected by MND. They are surrounded by many more cells called glia, which have roles in keeping our motor neurons healthy.

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A photo of astrocytes

Reading Time: 5 minutes I’m Hannah, an MND Association-funded first year PhD student at the University of Nottingham. During my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, also at Nottingham, I had the opportunity to do a project researching MND in the lab, where my interest in MND began. During this project I also met someone who was living with MND, who had come to hear about the research happening in our lab. Hearing his insights into the devastating effects of MND really stuck with me, and I decided I wanted to begin a career in MND research. This led me to my PhD project, in which I am aiming to make a natural type of cell called astrocytes more protective of motor neurones. We hope that this work will inform us of a possible new way to treat MND.

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