Reading Time: 3 minutes Mention the word Epidemiology and instantly my mind conjures up the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in America being swarmed by zombies or men in bright orange astronaut-type suits in The Crazies. While it’s true that it includes studying highly infectious diseases and how they spread (zombies and end of world scenarios aside!), it can…
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s been six months since the UK MND DNA Bank (DNA Bank) opened its doors to researchers around the world, so what has been happening to all those samples? Dr Lucy Smith, Research Information Administrator at the MND Association, explains: The DNA Bank is the first UK biobank dedicated to MND and has 3000 samples under…
Reading Time: 5 minutes By 2011 the UK motor neurone disease (MND) DNA Bank had collected over 3,000 samples from people living with MND in the UK, their family members and healthy controls. Several years since the first sample was taken, the MND Association can now proudly announce that the UK MND DNA Bank is ‘open for business’ to…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Dr Johnathan Cooper-Knock from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) has been awarded with the fifth Medical Research Council (MRC)/MND Association Lady Edith Wolfson Clinical Research Fellowship. Through his three-year fellowship, Dr Cooper-Knock will use the MND Association’s DNA bank to study how recently discovered mistakes (known as mutations) in a gene called C9ORF72…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sunday 8 January is not only a celebration of Prof Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, it’s also the date when the MND Association’s DNA bank appeal will be launched on BBC Radio 4. Our DNA bank contains over 3,400 samples from people with MND and their families. By using these samples scientists in this country have…
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’ve been extremely excited about this research finding for a while now and have closely followed the progress of Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi’s publication as it was accepted into the prestigious journal Lancet Neurology. At times this was a rollercoaster journey – one that we were carefully watching from the sidelines with baited breath. The reason why we’re…
