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MND stem cell study identifies TDP-43 astrocytes as not toxic to motor neurones

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…

Zebrafish show that ‘connector neurons’ are the key in early stages of MND

Reading Time: 3 minutes A recent study by Motor Neurone Disease Association-funded researcher Dr Tennore Ramesh from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) has shown that even before the symptoms of MND occur, at the earliest stages of the disease, ‘connector neurones’ known as interneurons are already becoming damaged in the zebrafish. Zebrafish are ideal models for helping…

Vive la difference!

Reading Time: 3 minutes It could be easy to assume that one motor neurone is pretty much like another, but a series of presentations on Thursday clearly showed that we need to be a little more sophisticated in our thinking. Dr Hynek Wichterle (Columbia University) discussed how in the developing embryo, there are distinct regional subtypes of motor neurones…