Cutting the time it takes for someone to be diagnosed with MND is among the aims of one young researcher whose work is being funded by Cure Finders.
Dr Rebecca Saleeb is a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and is using her work to conduct research which aims to speed up the current process and allow people living with MND to get access to the treatments and care they need as early as possible.
Dr Saleeb speaking at MND EnCouRage
Speaking at the MND Association’s EnCouRage event, which brings early career researchers together to learn more about MND and encourage them to forge a lasting career in MND research, Rebecca said:
The work the MND Association does in funding our research and supporting people who are living with MND is so critical for me as a researcher.
I'm funded as a junior research fellow by the Association, and this has enabled me to try and develop early-stage diagnostics so we can regain precious time that we're losing in the diagnostic process to try and get earlier access to drugs when they could be their most effective. And this is all down to the money raised by fundraisers.
There’s nothing to me that's more impactful than working on MND.
It is such an aggressive, incurable disease and so I just want to dedicate my work towards something that we can really make change in.
There's been some recent work where we've seen indicators taken from biopsies which suggest an individual could go on to develop MND up to 10 years before they've developed it.
This gives us great encouragement that there may be ways to even screen for MND, but certainly to diagnose it in its earlier stages.
As scientists, it's a puzzle that we don't have a solution to, but there's so much really exciting stuff coming out and I'm so happy to be a part of it.
