Countdown to the symposium

We organise the International Symposium on ALS/MND every year and it is regarded by the global MND research and healthcare communities as the conference to hear about and discuss advances in their respective fields.

In two weeks time, we’ll be in Orlando, Florida making our final preparations for this years’ three day conference that begins on 10 December. As all of our equipment has been shipped to America ahead of our arrival, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll all be waiting for us at the hotel!

I’m sure with less than two weeks to go, delegates of the symposium are also reaching their final preparations, such as finishing off their posters (maximum of 1metre square), preparing their speeches and trying to work out a ‘to-do’ list of things they want to achieve at the symposium – such as meeting a researcher they’re interested in collaborating with, or simply to learn more about a new topic. Once we arrive in two weeks time, we’ll be setting up the order for the poster session. With nearly 300 posters split into 11 themes this isn’t going to be an easy task and will be a rush against the clock to finish before keen poster presenters sneak into the poster room to put up their work for all to see. Until then, it’s a waiting game for everybody where we’re all eager for the symposium to begin on 10 December.

This year, I will be blogging from the symposium to keep you up-to-date with our highlights and insights. To help me report on the clinical sessions at the symposium are Kevin Thomas and Jane Connell, who are our regional care development advisers for North Wales and East Midlands respectively.

We’re extremely excited to be reporting via our blog this year and we hope that you will enjoy reading our posts on the highlights and insights from the International Symposium on ALS/MND from 10-13 December 2010.

A right Royal event

It’s 6.45 a.m. and I’m trying to find my way to the BBC Sheffield studios for a series of local radio interviews, but I’m lost in the dreaded one-way system (I knew I should’ve got the sat nav out, but it looked so easy on the map….). Just after seven I get into the studio and in front of the mike about a minute before I’m scheduled for a slot on BBC Radio Ulster. The system allows other regional stations to link directly into one of their network studios, so over the next 90 minutes I do a quick ‘tour of the country’ (Norfolk, Cambridge, Shropshire, Somerset, Teeside and, of course, Sheffield) without leaving my chair.

The reason for the early morning activity was the formal opening of the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) by the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh.  Led by SITraN Director Professor Pam Shaw, the institute offers a state-of-the-art environment for researchers working on a number of neurodegenerative diseases, with the principal focus on MND. I’d been lucky enough to have been up there last week, thrashing out the details on a new clinical biomarker study we’re going to be funding, so I’d already had the tour under more relaxed circumstances than yesterday’s occasion!

We had to get there well in advance of the royal party, but it gave me the chance to touch base with some of the scientists we’re funding, as well as catch up with representatives from other research funding bodies, such as the MRC, Parkinson’s UK and SMA Trust. The way a degenerative processes occurring in one disease will have overlap with the processes occurring in other diseases, so it’s important to catch up on what’s going on in other research fields and to discuss possible ways in which the research funding bodies might work more closely together.

We certainly knew when the guest of honour had arrived from the noise outside, courtesy of the local schoolchildren lining the main street.  The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were taken on a tour of the new building and learned about some of the avenues of research being explored by the different specialist teams, ranging from computational biology and genetics through to development of new laboratory models and clinical research. I was keen to find out how the clinical studies we’re funding were going, so at lunch was handily sat beside the clinician who is currently running studies in airway clearance techniques and the optimum timing of gastrostomy in MND patients. He was also able to update me on his bid to the Dept of Health to conduct a trial of a new respiratory intervention known as diaphragm pacing, to which the MND Association is lending its support as a potential co-funder.

The institute will provide a fantastic working environment for researchers and I could see the energy and enthusiasm among Pam’s team that comes with moving into a ‘new home’. Ultimately, though, it’s brainpower and dedication, not bricks and mortar, that will defeat this disease. As I left, I reflected on the fact that the Association provided its first research grant to Pam Shaw almost 20 years ago, when she was first entering the world of MND research – the first of many such awards over the years. It’s good to know we backed a winner.

Collaboration between cancer and MND researchers produces exciting results

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for exciting research results! Hot on the heels of the publication of Dr Turner’s imaging study, MND Association-funded researchers who pioneered a state-of the art technique adapted from cancer research have just published results describing some of the earliest events in MND-related degeneration.

Prof Giampietro Schiavo and colleagues at Cancer Research UK worked with Prof Linda Greensmith, an experienced MND researcher at University College London, to modify a process known as ‘multiphoton microscopy’, which had previously been used to visualize the migration of cancer cells. This allowed them to watch important ‘cargo’ being transported around motor neurones.

In their report published this week in the journal PNAS, the researchers have described how the transport of nerve-nourishing substances from the end of the neurone where it connects to the muscle back up towards the neurone’s ‘control centre’ in the spinal cord is slowed at the very earliest stages of MND. This suggests that transport systems could be a key target for drug development. Further details on the research are available on our website.

A key element of our strategy is to increase the capacity of the MND research workforce. Encouraging experts from other fields to collaborate with established MND researchers is one way of achieving this so we are really pleased to see the alliance between Profs Schiavo and Greensmith bear fruit. This is a great example of ‘thinking outside the box’ to progress MND research and the cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas between scientists working in different research areas.

Reference: Bilsland LG, Sahai E, Kelly G et al. Deficits in axonal transport precede ALS symptoms in vivo. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Nov 8. [Epub ahead of print] doi:10.1073/pnas.1006869107

Top neuroimaging researchers meet in Oxford

Hot on the heels of Kelly’s posting on Tuesday on the new MRI findings by researchers at Oxford, the same group was yesterday hosting the 1^st Neuroimaging Symposium in ALS/MND - a three-day conference, co sponsored by the MND Association, bringing together neurologists, physicists and psychologists from ten different countries across the world. I attended the opening day to see what was happening.

Such is the technical nature of neuroimaging, it kept my brain cells firing just trying to understand the jargon, with phrases like ‘Warped Space’, ‘Deformation Field’  ‘Jacobian Modulation’, ‘Voxels’, Biased Field Correction’ and so on. It was like hearing a script from Star Trek…

“The engines canna’ take it captain – that last hit from the Voxels damaged the deformation field. If I canna’ correct the biased field we’ll fall oot o’ warped space.”  

Whether or not I actually understood everything, it reinforced the importance of these ‘hothouse’ meetings, bringing together leading investigators from distinct disciplines to review the strengths and current limitations of their field of research, to look ahead at future developments in the field, to develop standards for collating and analysing data from many centres across the world and, most importantly, to find ways of collaborating more effectively.

I’m a great believer in not reinventing the wheel, so it was good to hear a presentation from the field of multiple sclerosis (MS) research. Neuroimaging has transformed MS research, being used to monitor the disease and provide an objective way of assess the impact of treatments, thus encouraging more drug companies to try to develop therapies.

The MS field has a long-standing imaging network and so part of the first day was devoted to looking at how we might learn from their experience and adapt their model for the needs of the MND research community. Of course, the MS network was kicked off by a large grant from the European Union, so an additional challenge for the MND research community will be to find the funding to allow these international collaborations to take place.

By 6pm my brain was full, so I headed back to Northampton, leaving the other delegates to another two days of serious ‘hard-core’ science…

First results from BioMOx study have been published!

We are pleased to announce that the first results from the Oxford Study for Biomarkers in MND/ALS (known as BioMOx) study have been published in the prestigious journal Neurology.

From this study, a common signature of nerve damage has been identified in the brains of people living with MND using an advanced MRI technique.

The findings demonstrate the importance of MRI in the development of a new biomarker for MND as well as being a significant stepping stone forwards toward two of our research goals – to identify disease markers, and to develop the research workforce.

MND Association’s Press Release
MND Association’s News in Research Article

Identifying disease markers
One of our research aims (set out in our research strategy 2010-2015) that we are working towards is that through our funding, we will have contributed to the identification of disease markers. By funding the BioMOx project (which is ongoing), we are already moving towards this aim.

Developing the research workforce
The BioMOx project is led by Dr Martin Turner from the University of Oxford who was awarded with the Medical Research Council (MRC)/ MND Association Lady Edith Wolfson Clinical Research Fellowship in 2008. This project is ongoing and means that we are not only funding cutting edge research, but we are also aiding Dr Martin Turner to develop his career as an MND clinician and a researcher.

As research is only as good as the researcher, it is important for us to continue to develop the UK basic research capacity by encouraging young clinicians into MND research. We currently fund four fellowships – our most recent of which was announced last month to Dr Pietro Fratta from the University of Sheffield.

Journal article reference: Filippini et al. Corpus callosum involvement is a consistent feature of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Neurology November 2, 2010 75:1645-1652 

Record breaking number of summary applications received

As posted recently, we are just starting our next research grant application round – and the number of summary applications received broke the record set a year ago.

We received 26 applications – 5 for PhD studentships and 21 for projects (requiring more experienced scientists).  These cover a wide range of areas, including genetics and cell-based research building on recent discoveries, further development of animal models, and the search for potential new treatments for MND. 

Only one application didn’t fit our criteria, so the remaining 25 will each be reviewed by three members of our Biomedical Research Advisory Panel (BRAP).  This left Natasha very busy last week sending out packs of summaries to BRAP members, as well as logging all the applications on our IT systems, and acknowledging their receipt to the applicants. 

When all the reviews are returned later this month, the reviewers’ scores will be used to determine which applicants are asked to submit full research proposals.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of our research funding grants round – in the meantime, if you’re interested in finding out more about our current portfolio of research projects then please visit our ‘research we fund’ section of our website.