Reading Time: 5 minutes There has recently been a flood of news stories on the outcomes of the Australian Phase 1 clinical trial investigating Copper ATSM (CuATSM) which is a small man-made compound that can selectively deliver copper to cells. The results were first presented at our International Symposium in Glasgow back in December. MND is a terrible disease…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Could there be a small number of people for whom there is a pause or a reversal in their disease progression? A talk at the Symposium on Friday afternoon from Dr Rick Bedlack (Duke University) looked into this very topic. There have been few studies looking into the changing nature of motor neurone disease (MND) progression,…
Reading Time: 4 minutes The only ‘proven’ treatment to slow the progression of MND is Riluzole. There are, however, many organisations offering expensive ‘unproven’ and ‘alternative’ treatments for MND. We have worked with the organisation Sense about Science to help produce their ‘I’ve got nothing to lose by trying it’ information booklet so that people living with MND can…
Reading Time: 2 minutes With over 140 million active users Twitter has grown up a lot since it arrived in 2006. This means that Twitter can be an extremely powerful tool for engaging, influencing and reaching out to a wide range of audiences across the world. Twitter is a social network (like Facebook and Google+) which allows you to…
Reading Time: 9 minutes I’m sure many of you who follow our blog have also been following the discussion on our forum about the Neuraltus trial for a drug called NP001. First of all, thanks to ‘Matt J’ for initially raising this issue on our forum. It highlights the power of the forums in facilitating information spread and getting new news…
Reading Time: 4 minutes We recently announced that following the success of our first virtual International Symposium on ALS/MND (the largest medical and scientific conference specific to MND/ALS) last year and the ongoing challenges caused by the global pandemic, the MND Association’s 32nd Symposium in December 2021 will be held online. As we head towards our Symposium this year,…
Reading Time: 6 minutes Today marks 10 years since the MND Association’s research blog first started, making it our ‘blogiversary’. It officially began with a welcome post from our very own director, Dr Brian Dickie, which talked about the main purpose of the blog – to share what’s going on in the world of MND research and give you…
Reading Time: 4 minutes And the answers to our Christmas Quiz are: How many neurones does a human have? Billions Which animal has the largest brain? Bottlenose dolphin How much does a human brain weigh in comparison with our total average body weight (in percent)? 2 How many DNA samples does the MND Association’s DNA bank hold? 3,400 How…
Reading Time: 2 minutes We have been made aware that there’s a new kid on the block in terms of unproven treatments, which is a new route of administration of stem cells at the X-Cell stem cell clinic based in Germany. As a brief background of the story to date, last year, a group of international researchers collectively known…
Reading Time: 2 minutes The room was crowded at 8am for the first presentation of day two, from Dr Doug Sipp (RIKEN Institute, Japan) on ‘Unregulated ALS/MND treatments and public education’. Dr Sipp provided an insightful and entertaining overview of the plethora of self-styled stem cell ‘clinics’ and the tactics they employ to attract business. During the talk, the song Snake Oil, by…
