Clinic researchers share findings at international symposium on MND
December 2020: Researchers will join together online from Wednesday 9 – Friday 11 December for the MNDA event.
Researchers from the Anne Rowling Clinic are amongst those attending and presenting their work at the 31st Motor Neurone Disease Association International Symposium on ALS/MND. This year the 3 day event will take place virtually due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The event brings together researchers from around the world to foster strong collaborations and share new understanding on MND as rapidly as possible. It is the largest medical and scientific conference specific to MND/ALS.
Emily Beswick, Dr Charis Wong and Dr Maria Stavrou are among those presenting their research.
PhD student Emily, will be presenting details of three pieces of research on MND clinical trials. The first is on the use of neuropsychiatric and cognitive assessments in MND clinical trials over the last 25 years. The second is on factors impacting trial participation in people with Motor Neurone Disease and the third is a review of communication with potential participants following the launch of the MND-SMART clinical drugs trial.
Charis, our Clinical Trials Fellow, will be presenting her review of past and present clinical trials to understand the challenges in designing and conducting ALS trials and find potential approaches to overcome these challenges in future trials.
Finally Maria, who is a Rowling Scholar, will present details of her work in the lab with human stem cells generated from patients with MND. She has been investigating the most common genetic cause of MND, C9orf72, to learn more about how cells malfunction. The more we know about this process, the closer we are to understanding how to treat MND.