Reading Time: 2 minutes We know that neck weakness can be a difficult symptom to manage in people with MND, and that the current offering of neck collars and supports do not always suit everyone. In order to come up with a solution to this, we are funding Dr Chris McDermott from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)…
Reading Time: 2 minutes The MND Association funds several healthcare research projects that aim to improve care and symptom management for people living with MND. One such project is TONiC, which is examining factors that influence quality of life in patients with neurological conditions, including MND. So what is TONiC? The Trajectories of Outcome in Neurological Conditions (TONiC) study…
Reading Time: 2 minutes What is the MND Register? The MND Register is a major five year project that aims to collect and store information about every person living with MND in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is led by world-class MND researchers Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi and Prof Kevin Talbot, at a cost of £400,500 (our grant reference:…
Reading Time: 2 minutes We know that some people with MND will be affected by cognitive change and a small proportion of these will develop frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The symptoms of cognitive change include changes in planning and decision making. To help support people with MND who have these symptoms, and their families and carers, we need to firstly…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Some people with MND develop an increasingly recognised form of dementia, known as frontotemporal dementia or FTD (for more information visit http://www.ftdtalk.org/). The main symptoms of FTD include alterations in decision making, behaviour and difficulty with language. The relationship between MND and FTD is not well understood. Prof Julie Snowden and PhD student Jennie Saxon at…
Reading Time: < 1 minute PhD student Emma Smith has recently started the second year of her MND Association-funded research project at the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SiTRAN) in Sheffield (our project reference: 870-792). With her supervisors Dr Kurt De Vos and Dr Andrew Grierson she is investigating the role of mitochondria in C9orf72-related MND. Mitochondria are the cell’s…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Just like when we put out our recycling every week, the cells in our body have their own recycling system too. One of the recycling plants within our motor neurones works by a system called autophagy. In a recently completed research project that the MND Association has funded Dr Rob Layfield and Dr Alice Goode…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Mistakes in the C9orf72 gene are the most common cause of inherited MND, and can be linked to about 40% of all cases. Now that we know that damage to the C9orf72 gene causes MND the next step is to understand how this mutation causes the motor neurones to die. In particular Dr Jakub Scaber…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Prior research has already shown that build-up of the protein TDP-43 is found in the majority of cases of MND (irrespective of whether it was caused by an inherited genetic mistake). In healthy nerve cells, TDP-43 is normally found in the cell nucleus (the management centre of the cell). But when we look at nerve…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Mistakes in a gene known as ALS5, or spatacsin, cause a rare form of inherited MND that develops at a much earlier age than most other forms of the disease. Under supervision from Dr Cahir O’Kane, MND Association funded PhD student Alex Patto has been using fruit flies to understand how mistakes in spatacsin cause…
