Reading Time: 4 minutes This blog is part of the ‘Highlights from Perth’ collection of articles, where you can read about the content of some of the talks and posters presented at the 30th International Symposium on ALS/MND. All presentations have a code beginning with ‘C’ followed by a number (e.g. C50). This will help you locate the specific…
Reading Time: 6 minutes ‘From antibiotics and insulin to blood transfusions and treatments for cancer or HIV, virtually every medical achievement in the past century has depended directly or indirectly on research using animals’ – from the Royal Society’s position statement on the use of animals in research. We know that talking about using animals in research is an…
Reading Time: 4 minutes After its successful premiere in 2017, the University of Oxford organised another meeting of people affected by inherited MND, called ‘Families for the Treatment of Hereditary MND (FaTHoM)’. This turned out to be yet another excellent day where MND clinicians-researchers presented on topics such as genetics of MND, genetic testing and gene therapies. Below you…
Reading Time: 3 minutes A recent press release by the pharmaceutical company Biogen reported preliminary results from an ongoing clinical trial investigating a form of precision therapy in people with SOD1-related MND. This drug, known as tofersen, is now in the final stages of Phase 1/2 testing in centres across the world, including Sheffield in the UK. Tofersen is…
Reading Time: 2 minutes The research team frequently gets asked about the effectiveness of alternative therapies and their use as treatments for MND. Here we report on a recent paper that looked at the effects of ashwagandha, or Indian ginseng, in a SOD1 mouse model of MND. For around 3000 years Withania somnifera (WS), commonly known as ashwagandha or Indian ginseng,…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Love them or loath them, the band Steps’ first single ‘5,6,7,8’ was a techno line dance song released in 1998 from their debut album ‘step one’, with the B side ‘words of wisdom’. Using this forced and purely tenuous link and an equally awkward segue, I would like to share with you the news that…
Reading Time: 3 minutes Researchers from the Flinders University, Australia and University of Miami have discovered a new protein that can act as a biomarker to track disease progression in people with MND. A paper written under the leadership of Dr Shepheard and Dr Rogers was published today in the research journal ‘Neurology’. What is p75 and what do…
Reading Time: 4 minutes With all the talk of new gene discoveries in recent years, the Sunday morning scientific session returned to the original discovery in 1993 that mutations in the SOD1 gene were responsible for around a fifth of familial (inherited) MND cases and 2-3% of all cases of the disease. Although much of our understanding of MND…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A number of articles were published in various news sources on 11 July 2014, highlighting how scientists in Sheffield are working towards testing a promising treatment for a rare inherited form of MND caused by the SOD1 gene. Here we write about the research and what it means for people living with MND. The Sheffield…
Reading Time: 5 minutes The 24th International Symposium on ALS/MND began in Milan today with a record number of over 950 delegates attending to hear the latest news in MND research. Inherited MND is a rare form of MND characterised by a family history of the disease. Over recent years more and more genes have been discovered, which has…
