Reading Time: 2 minutes This article was written by Dr Keith Mayl and Dr Ahmad Al Khleifat of King’s College London. Researchers at King’s College Hospital, led by Professor Christopher Shaw, have embarked on the first gene therapy clinical trial for patients affected by a specific genetic form of ALS, the most common type of MND. ALS is a…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Each year, the MND Association dedicates the month of June to raising MND awareness. This year, we focus on the eyes – in most people with MND the only part of their body they can still move and the only way left for them to communicate. Alongside the Association-wide campaign, the Research Development team selected…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A new research paper has been published today in the Science Translational Medicine journal, describing a new gene implicated in developing MND. What is this gene and why is it important for our fight against MND? Although they are not the sole cause of MND, genes play a big role in someone’s probability of developing the…
Reading Time: 3 minutes In light of the upcoming Biomedical Research Advisory Panel meeting happening on Friday 7 April that will discuss which new research projects the MND Association will fund, we are pleased to report on the progress of one of our already-funded researchers. In their three year project, funded by the MND Association, Prof Annalisa Pastore (King’s College London)…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Brain banks are a vital resource in MND research. The MRC London Neurodegenerative Diseases Brain Bank was established in 1989. It is part of King’s College London and King’s College Hospital, and is part-funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). After 18 months of planning, the bank has recently relocated into a bright terracotta building, fit…
Reading Time: 2 minutes During Awareness month in June we reported on the work of Dr James Bashford at King’s College London, exploring new ways of measuring muscle fasciculations in people with MND. The results from the one year pilot study have shown a lot of promise, which has led to Dr Bashford recently being awarded a Clinical Research…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Today some exciting news about the genetics of MND was published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics. The results come in two research papers published in the same issue of the journal. This blog post discusses the results of the first of these papers for which King’s College London based Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi was one…
Reading Time: 2 minutes What are fasciculations? When motor neurones in the spinal cord become damaged this makes them electrically unstable, meaning they spontaneously discharge electrical impulses that cause small groups of muscles to contract. These contractions, known as fasciculations, are a common symptom of MND. Research suggests that they might be a good marker of motor neurone health.…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has enabled researchers to create and study living human motor neurones in the lab, derived originally from patient skin cells. This project (our reference 80-970-797) is a collaboration between the labs of Professors Chris Shaw and Jack Price at King’s College in London and Siddharthan Chandran in Edinburgh. It…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Background to C9orf72 toxicity We know that damage to C9orf72 (both the gene and the protein it makes) is a crucial step in why some people get MND and why some people get frontotemporal dementia. There are three possible reasons why C9orf72 is toxic. 1) the way the gene is damaged alters how it normally…
