Close
Drug discovery and development

Drug discovery and development

Reading Time: 4 minutes This is blog number 17 in our ‘Symposium Blogathon’ – counting down to the 32nd International Symposium on ALS/MND. Numbers in bold green type correspond to the code in the abstract book. Click on the number to be redirected to the full abstract (the page may take a minute to load). Drug discovery can be…

Lighthouse Project shines a beacon on HERVs and their role in ALS

Reading Time: 3 minutes There is recent evidence to suggest that Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERVs) may be involved in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). HERV-K has been directly linked to motor neurone damage and has been found in the brain tissue of patients with ALS. The MND Association recently awarded a small grant to fund part of the ‘Lighthouse Project’…

Do retroviruses contribute to the common, sporadic form of MND?

Reading Time: 2 minutes New research from scientists at the American National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda suggest that they might. In a research paper published in Science Translational Medicine yesterday, Li, Nath and colleagues proposed that sporadic MND may be linked to an endogenous retrovirus called ‘HERV-K’. So they conducted a series of experiments to…