Reading Time: 3 minutes The MND Association has funded a number of research projects in the laboratory of Dr Frank Hirth at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. His area of expertise is in using fruit flies to understand how motor neurones die in MND. There is an opportunity to read a summary of some of his work…
Reading Time: 3 minutes We know that in the 5-10% of cases where there is a strong family history of MND, there is likely to be a genetic cause at work, acting like a weight to push the scales in favour of the disease occurring. These gene mutations are hidden somewhere within the 15 billion or so letters of…
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 2011 an international team of scientists, including three MND Association-funded researchers, identified the elusive C9orf72 gene located on Chromosome 9. Since this ground-breaking discovery, researchers from around the world have been trying to find a way to open-up and reveal more about this MND-causing gene. Determined to get inside and unravel the secrets behind…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Funded by the MND Association, international researchers have used stem cell technology to learn more about the relationship between motor neurones and their support cells. These findings highlight the potential of stem cell technology as a tool to create new human ‘in a dish’ cellular models of disease to learn more about the causes of…
