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Tag: disease models

Investigating differences in protein production in MND

Investigating differences in protein production in MND

Research Development Team

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.

Growing brain cells in 3D to study MND

Growing brain cells in 3D to study MND

Research Development Team1 Comment

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.

Kate – incurable optimist

Kate Arkell1 Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute When I started my job at the Association just four years ago we were funding 19 research projects and studentships. Researchers were using animal models based on the one major disease-causing gene that had been discovered to try and learn more about the mechanisms underlying all types of MND, which I thought was all pretty clever…