Reading Time: 3 minutes Project MinE is an international genetics project that is analysing DNA from people with MND in detail. For the majority of people with MND, the disease appears ‘sporadically’ for no apparent reason. For a small number of people, approximately 5-10% of those with MND there is an inherited link, in other words the disease runs in…
Reading Time: 4 minutes The exact course, duration and rate of progression of MND often varies greatly from person to person; even when there is a known family history of the disease caused by a specific MND-causing gene (eg SOD1). This same variability also occurs in mice. Researchers, funded by the MND Association, took two mice with the same SOD1…
Reading Time: 5 minutes From Sunday morning to Tuesday evening last week, there was a lot of talk of MND research going on in Liverpool. The reason for this ‘hotspot’ of discussions was due to the annual meeting of an international consortium of MND researchers taking place at the University of Liverpool. The 10th International Consortium on SOD1 and…
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s taken a huge international collaboration, including 3 MND Association-funded scientists, to discover a genetic mistake that appears to cause almost 40% of cases of familial (inherited) MND – that’s nearly twice as many as are caused by mutations in the SOD1 gene and more than three times as many as are caused by TDP-43 and…
Reading Time: < 1 minute Research published today in Neuron has identified that mistakes in a gene called VCP can cause an inherited (familial) form of MND. This is the third gene this year that has been identified as a cause of familial MND which really shows the ‘snowballing’ speed that genetic research is taking. Read about this on our press release: http://bit.ly/dXcjE4 Research paper: Johnson…
Reading Time: < 1 minute Next month will see the start of three new Association-funded research projects that will each move us closer to achieving some of the key targets set out in our research strategy. They involve recently discovered genetic causes of MND, new disease models and a novel way of measuring the progress of the disease – all very exciting stuff!…
Reading Time: 2 minutes It is really quiet in the office today, with a few colleagues out and about for various reasons. As soon as the thought entered my head about having a productive day with no distractions, an email landed in my In Box. Had I seen the research report mentioned in this press release? A quick scan…
Reading Time: 3 minutes As the afternoon was drawing to a close in the office yesterday, we learnt of an exciting new MND research paper that had been published in the prestigious journal, Nature. The research suggests that a rare mistake (mutation) in gene called ‘Optineurin’ (OPTN) can cause MND and they also suggest that OPTN may be involved in causing…
