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 Huge congratulations to Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi for winning the prestigious Sheila Essey Award at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) research conference taking place in Vancouver, Canada. Professor Al-Chalabi is an MND Association funded researcher and Professor of Neurology and Complex Disease Genetics at King’s College London. He is also the Director of our MND Care and Research…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Today an exciting announcement was made about three organisations working together to increase our knowledge on the best way to provide palliative and end of life care. The MND Association and the Chief Scientists Office in Scotland (CSO) will be working with Marie Curie on a new research call. In addition to a £1million funding pot…
Reading Time: 5 minutes The results of new research investigating a link between physical activity and MND was presented by the University of Sheffield research group in the late-breaking news session on the last day of the 24th International Symposium on ALS/MND. Under the leadership of Prof Pam Shaw, along with Dr Chris McDermott, MND Association-funded researcher Dr Ceryl Harwood presented…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Plenary speaker Dr Massimo Filippi put this question to delegates on the second day of the 24th International Symposium on ALS/MND. Opening the session on neuroimaging, Dr Filippi gave an excellent review on what we currently know about this area of research, and ultimately answering whether or not we can see more clearly in MND?…
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: 3 minutes When you hear the word ‘cluster’ the first thing that comes to mind is probably a group of stars – not MND. During a plenary talk by Dr Ettore Beghi on Saturday 7 December the question was: ‘Is there anything we can learn from clusters in MND?’ What do we mean by clusters? Dr Beghi…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Background to TDP43 A characteristic sign of motor neurones affected by motor neurone disease is the clumps of protein visible down a microscope. Although these proteins have been observed in motor neurones from people affected by MND since the earliest descriptions in the 1870s, a key discovery was made when the identity of a protein,…
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: 3 minutes After we posted yesterday’s blog (Thursday 10 October) about Giovanna Mallucci’s research in Leicester, we received a report on the story from the President of the MND Association, Prof Colin Blakemore. The researchers identified a key pathway that might be a turning point in the search for effective treatments for many types of neurodegenerative disease and we…
