To test and confirm three potential subgroups of MND.
Pre-fellow: Dr Heather Marriott
Principal Investigator: Dr Alfredo Iacoangeli
Lead Institution: King's College London
MND Association Funding: £104,900
Funding dates: March 2024 - September 2025
About the project
Previous research has suggested that people with MND could be grouped based on shared biology which may help to better predict someone’s disease progression and move towards personalised treatment approaches. This pre-fellowship at King’s College London will gather more evidence to confirm three subgroups that have previously been identified by the team using a machine learning method (computer software that analyses large amounts of data). These subgroups are based on different patterns of gene activity in people with MND and the project will further test these to confirm if they are accurate and establish whether they could be useful for MND before symptoms appear. Genetic and health information from people with MND (before and after they developed symptoms) and healthy controls from a large database and research resource, called The UK Biobank, will be used to test these subgroups.
What could this mean for MND research?
This project could lead to the development of more personalised treatments. By understanding more about the changes happening in gene activity during the disease, people could be placed into groups with similar changes. In turn, this could result in the development of new potential treatments for these specific groups.
Project code: 902-800
