MND / ALS
An “extremely valuable” breakthrough has been made in understanding motor neurone disease (MND).
Rugby league legend and fundraising hero Kevin Sinfield has embarked on his Extra Mile Challenge to support people living with MND, and has already more than doubled his sponsorship target.
Investment of £375million will be made over the next five years to fund research into neurodegenerative diseases, it has been announced.
An NHS Trust has received funding from the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation to explore whether some types of medications already used to treat other conditions could slow progression of motor neurone disease (MND).
Rugby league legend Kevin Sinfield is taking on his next hugely ambitious fundraising challenge, after raising £2.7million last year through his efforts to support people living with MND and research to change the future.
From her father’s battle with MND and a lack of appropriate care and support came Abbie Coutts’ desire to make a change within the medical profession. Here, she shares her story of becoming an educator, dedicated to equipping healthcare workers with greater ability to support patients and their families
Plans have been unveiled for a new purpose-built care centre of excellence for people living with MND, with the £5million fundraising appeal spearheaded by Rob Burrow.
Two fundraisers have raised over £150,000 for the MND Association through their gruelling Olympic challenge, the Spennylympics.
A mother and son team who have devised a pioneering standing wheelchair are looking to partner with a manufacturer to bring their prototype to fruition.
The Walking Wheelchair enables people with limited use of their legs to assume a standing position, using a saddle therapy seat and Segway-style wheelbase. Its design, which is aimed at people living with conditions including Muscular Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy, Motor Neurone Disease and spinal injury (L1-5), is protected by patent and has already won awards for its innovative design. It differs from what is already available through its saddle seat lifting the user’s weight vertically to standing, rather than a conventional seat which tips, and has a gyroscope to balance the standing weight instead of a counterweight. It also has a two wheel wheelbase with a tight turning circle rather than the standard six-wheel base.
A pioneering gene therapy programme which could pave the way for novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases has been launched.
The research has been awarded £513,141 from LifeArc and the Motor Neurone Disease Association to test the feasibility and efficiency of an ambitious gene therapy programme to treat motor neurone disease (MND) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients with underlying mutations in a causative gene known as C9orf72. If successful, this programme could lead groundbreaking research into future clinical trials for one of the most common forms of these incurable neurodegenerative diseases within the next few years. The research, at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, is led by Dr Guillaume Hautbergue, head of the RNA Biology Laboratory, in collaboration with Professor Mimoun Azzouz and Professor Dame Pamela Shaw.
