Topics of the informal ‘poster’ session are on target
01 December 2006
An integral part of the International Symposium on ALS/MND is the poster session, which usually takes place on the morning of day 2 of the meeting. This is an opportunity for scientist, clinicians and healthcare professionals alike to discuss their work informally, prompted by poster-sized (approximately 1 metre square) hard copy of their latest results.The categories in which the ‘posters’ are presented varies little from year to year. However, this year for the first time there was a category entitled “Therapeutic strategies”. “I don’t necessarily think that there are more studies on therapeutic strategies this year,” commented Dr Belinda Cupid, Research Manager at the MND Association, “it is just that this category was chosen to focus the minds of the presenters".
The topics presented in this category ranged from the latest studies on the effects of stem cells in animal models of MND, to the planning for phase 2 clinical studies on a novel compound under development in a French biotechnology company, Trophos.
Rather than the conventional drug discovery approach of ‘find a target for the drug and then find the drug’, Trophos screened many potential drugs for their potential to rescue dying motor neurones in a plastic dish in a laboratory. Those that showed some effect here were then tested in more complex animal models of MND. It was only when these results proved positive too did the company start to look at how their potential drug may be exerting its effects. Their results were encouraging: they found that their drug affected a biochemical pathway, that when damaged, may contribute to motor death in MND. Plans are underway for a larger European clinical trial assessing the safety of the Trophos drug to commence next year.
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Notes to editors
The 17th International Symposium on ALS/MND is taking place in Yokohama, Japan, between Thursday, 30 November and Saturday, 2 December. The event is organised by the UK-based Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association and hosted this year by the Japanese ALS Association (JALSA).
