Reading Time: 9 minutes Research into genetic causes of MND has greatly increased over the last few decades and gene changes have since been found to play a role in both inherited and non-inherited (sporadic) forms of the disease. Since the discovery of the first gene change in MND around 30 years ago, researchers have found over 40 gene…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Researchers from King’s College London have recently completed a study looking into different variations (a change or mistake) within the SOD1 gene and found that understanding the position and type of change within the gene can help to predict onset and progression of the disease.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Global biotechnology company Biogen has announced plans to make tofersen, a potential treatment for people whose MND is believed to be driven by mutations in the SOD1 gene, available to more people on an early access programme. Biogen have also revealed that they are conducting a new Phase 3 clinical trial of tofersen in those…
Reading Time: 4 minutes This week sees the start of the 30th International Symposium on ALS/MND in Perth, Australia. The Symposium brings together the brightest minds from the MND research and healthcare communities. With 110 oral presentations, and over 420 posters, the Symposium is an opportunity for around 1,000 researchers and healthcare professionals to share new understanding of the…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Two sets of MND genetic results were published yesterday. One of these results was about the importance of a new gene called NEK1. The second highlighted the role of gene C21orf2 in MND – we wrote an article about this yesterday. Both sets of results were published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics. What are…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Researchers from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) at the University of Sheffield have uncovered a new function of the C9orf72 protein. A paper on their work has recently been published in the EMBO Journal. A change or mutation to the C9orf72 gene is linked to about 40% of cases of inherited MND. We…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Dr Russell McLaughlin from Trinity College Dublin is one of our Junior Non-Clinical Fellows. Our Non-Clinical Fellowships were awarded for the first time last year. They aim to retain and develop early and mid-career MND researchers conducting biomedical research. These fellowships are funded for up to four years. We are currently funding two junior and…
Reading Time: 2 minutes In previous research Prof Kevin Talbot and colleagues at the University of Oxford began to understand more about how the C9orf72 gene defect causes human motor neurones to die. These studies were carried out using an impressive piece of lab technology, called induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology. iPSC technology allows skin cells to be…
Reading Time: 2 minutes A team at the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience are creating a zebrafish model to study the C9orf72 gene mutation in MND, and work out its role in the brain and spinal cord (our reference 864-792). Zebrafish are a good way of modelling what happens in human MND. We know that many of the genes…
Reading Time: 2 minutes If you looked at the motor neurones of people with MND down the microscope you would see clumps of a protein called TDP-43. Researchers around the world are working to find why these clumps form and how they are linked to MND. Dr Jemeen Sreedharan has been looking at the effects of TDP-43 in fruit…
