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 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.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Following on from baking, and understanding the roles of genes and proteins, Helena Chaytow (Royal Holloway) explains about her research. Helena is an MND Association-funded PhD student developing small strands of DNA, known as ‘antisense oligonucleotides’ to make motor neurones more resistant to damage. DNA and RNA The challenge of working with Motor Neuron Disease (MND)…
