Emily's Diary

I’ve just returned to work after a fantastic honeymoon in Egypt to realise that the Symposium is only a few days away. Being in Birmingham this year is great, I only live 30 minutes drive from the venue and my husband works just down the road. He will therefore be providing a chauffeur service for me and my two Sheffield colleagues who are staying with us (really must remind him about this!).

I will be presenting a scientific poster on Tuesday morning which I quite enjoy doing. It’s much less nerve racking than standing up in front of everyone, plus you get to chat about your work and share ideas with people from all over the MND field. You really have to be on the ball though; people are a lot less shy about asking questions when there isn’t an audience. I’ve been very organised this year and sorted out my poster before the wedding so now all I have to do is get the house into some sort of order before our guests arrive.

Well, our house guests (now totalling three) are all settled in and our efficient chauffeur service conveyed a car-full to the Hilton on time this morning.

First impression of the meeting this year is the large number of delegates, over 800. Also there are a number of scientists new to the MND field, showing an encouraging increase in research and interest in the disease.

The Sheffield team started the day with three very nervous (currently very relieved) platform speakers. They all gave excellent talks, answered some challenging questions and will be relaxing with a glass of wine or two at the conference dinner later on. I am personally very curious to see what the regional entertainment will be. I’m not sure the suggestion of comedians Jasper Carrot or Lenny Henry was taken too seriously but you never know........

The evening entertainment last night was brilliant, a Beatles tribute band (my mum was very jealous). Everyone got up to dance including some leading Professors in the field.

Today began with the Poster Session which is always enjoyable and very informative. I was interested to learn about the DNA bank project currently ongoing in Australia. This has presented a whole host of challenges to the organisers with centres spread all across a very large country with some extremely remote areas. They have so far collected around 600 MND samples and aim to achieve 1,000 in the next couple of years to provide a whole new population for us to study.

One of the most entertaining talks of the symposium so far was given by Professor Raisman. It is very refreshing at a scientific meeting like this to find a presentation using plenty of analogies to illustrate the work. This included a film of his lovely grand-daughter crawling upstairs, representing the movement of a rat’s four limbs!

This morning also included a enlightening discussion on the use of mouse models to test therapeutics. This resulted in a consensus that specific guidelines are needed for the translation of successful laboratory testing into effective treatments. My head is swimming with new ideas which I can’t wait to debate further with my colleagues.

One of the most interesting talks today was about man’s best friend. In dogs there is a naturally occurring motor neurone disorder that shares many similarities with human MND.

Professor Coates, a vet from the USA, described the disease and how principles from human genetics were used on canine pedigrees. Amazingly they found that 60% of these animals had a mutation in the SOD1 gene, further proving the overlap between these conditions. More genetic research in the dogs could therefore provide clues to the genetics of human MND.

The conference ended with a joint closing session featuring summary talks from both the scientific and clinical meetings. Dr Andy Grierson from Sheffield had the honour (or the unenviable job!) of picking and summarising the highlights from over 45 oral presentations in just 20 minutes. I know he was very nervous about doing this but did a fantastic job.

The closing session also featured an excellent presentation on stem cell research. Professor Svendsen explained that his lab works on a strategy which uses a combination of stem cells injected into the spinal cord and muscles to offer two sites of protection. This research is at an early stage but has great potential.

We are now heading off back to the Sheffield labs to get a bit of a rest and time to digest all this new information from what has been an intense and very interesting symposium.

It’s been a few weeks since the Symposium and I’m back to being busy in the laboratory (which today has involved several hours of looking down a microscope at motor neurones). In Sheffield we all benefited from the experience and often refer back to the presentations. Overall it was an excellent meeting which reminded everyone how broad the scope of MND research is and got us thinking outside our own field.

I have been invited to speak about current research at a local MND Association Branch next year and the conference has given me plenty of ideas. Stem cells are always a hot topic but not my area of expertise so the excellent overview we had in the final session will be very useful. I shall be working on the talk over Christmas with guidance from my mum, who represents my target audience and helps me break down scientific concepts into more friendly terms (she is also a good listener and very patient!).