Reading Time: 5 minutes Hi, I’m Ben, a researcher working at Sheffield University. I attended last year’s International Symposium on ALS/MND as one of the Symposium Communication Ambassadors and this is one of the most interesting pieces of work I saw. MND is an incredibly complex disease, with many factors contributing to the death of motor neurons. The way…
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.
Reading Time: 12 minutes Despite decades of research, we still do not fully understand why some people get MND, but studies in cell and animal models of the disease suggest that astrocytes and microglia cells are key players in the process, and a potential target for new therapies to moderate oxidative stress, reduce mitochondrial damage, and limit glutamate excitotoxicity…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Years ago, it was believed that it was only the motor neurones, the long nerve cells that carry messages from the brain to the muscles via the spinal cord, that were affected by motor neurone disease. However, over the last 10-15 years we have learnt about the vital contribution of other cell types collectively called…
Reading Time: 4 minutes This blog is part of the ‘Virtual Highlights’ collection of articles, where you can read about the content of some of the talks and posters presented at the Virtual 31st International Symposium on ALS/MND. Guest researcher blog post written by Nora Markus, 2019 Symposium Biomedical Poster Prize winner. About me My name is Nora Markus,…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Despite the winter chill, there is a warm fuzzy feeling today with the news of a paper published in the journal ‘Brain’ by an MND Association funded Research Fellow, Dr Scott Allen. Based at the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), Dr Allen was awarded a Senior Non-Clinical Research Fellowship by the Association in 2016,…
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: 4 minutes After a brilliant first day at ENCALS, which included a talk by Dr Johannes Brettschneider, the second day began with a talk by Thierry Latran Speaker Prof Clive Svendsen (Director of the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute) arriving directly from attending at the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Symposium. Prof Svendsen gave a riveting talk to over…
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: 3 minutes On the last day of the 23rd International Symposium on ALS/MND in Chicago last week there was an excellent session on ‘the role of non-neuronal cells’ – it was an exciting session – below is a flavour of some of the topics discussed. As its name suggests, motor neurone disease causes the degeneration of motor…
