Yorkshire university given £1.6m to progress pioneering treatment for motor neurone disease

A research team at the University of Sheffield’s Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) has been awarded the grant by the Medical Research Council (MRC) to step up studies into the neuro-degenerative disease.

The funding of £1.6m will be used to advance the development of a drug, called M102, which has been found to have beneficial properties in tackling MND.

Dr Richard Mead, Principal Investigator for the project, said: "M102 has the potential to significantly slow down the disease progression in both familial and sporadic MND patients.”

MND, which is also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, affects about 5,000 people in the UK and 30,000 people in the USA, with numbers predicted to rise.

It is a disorder that affects the nerves – or motor neurons –in the brain and spinal cord that form the connection between the nervous system and muscles to enable movement of the body.

The messages from these nerves gradually stop reaching the muscles, leading them to weaken, stiffen and eventually waste away.

Patients with MND include the former England and Leeds Rhinos rugby league player Rob Burrow, who played 493 games in a 16-year career with the West Yorkshire club, who announced in December 2019 that he had been diagnosed with MND.

This year he was awarded an MBE for services to his sport but the honour additionally respected how he has raised awareness of MND through the pandemic.

The disease has already robbed Burrow of the ability to speak without a machine and forced him into a wheelchair.

Burrow’s former team-mate Kevin Sinfield helped in a campaign last year to raise funds and awareness by completing seven marathons in seven days - with the total raised more than £2.6m.

There is currently no cure for MND and no effective treatments to halt or reverse the progression of the devastating disease.

The beneficial properties in the M102 drug were discovered by researchers at the University in Sheffield, who are working in partnership with a USA-based bio-pharmaceutical company, Aclipse Therapeutics, eight years years ago.

Pre-clinical models highlighted the potential for M102 to stop and reverse the progression of MND, which affects a patient’s ability to walk, talk, eat and breathe.

The next step for the team of researchers is to identify gene signatures that can discriminate between responders and non-responders to selected drugs.

With the long-term aim to be able to identify the best drug for each patient.

Professor Dame Pamela Shaw, director of SITraN and the NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre, said: “This funding award from the MRC is wonderful news for MND patients who are in desperate need of an effective therapy to address this life-threatening neurodegenerative disease.”

Patients with MND have also included the world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who died at the age of 76 two years ago after being first diagnosed with the condition in 1963.

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