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Prof Ron Grigg
Small Molecule Therapies for MND and other Neurodegerative Diseases
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Motor neurone disease (MND) is a rapidly progressive, fatal neurodegenerative disorder in which injury and cell death of motor neurones causes loss of the connection between the brain and voluntary muscles.
Progressive muscle weakness and wasting eventually affects the muscles controlling movement of the limbs, as well as bulbar and respiratory function Patients progressively cannot speak, chew/swallow, walk and finally cannot breathe but their brain function is unimpaired.
The average course of the disease is only 2.5 - 3 years from onset. MND has an incidence of ~2/ 100,000 and a prevalence of 6-8/ 100,000 in most countries. In the UK approximately 5,000 patients have MND at any time point and approximately 1,200 die from the disease each year.
The high cost of drug development when set against the relatively low predicted return from subsequent sales to a small group of patients dissuades large pharmaceutical companies from MND drug development .
The UK financial burden of neurological diseases will double to £35 Bn a year by 2026. Our YEF program will use cutting edge catalytic cascade chemistry allied to advanced design software to take our promising MND drug lead compounds through to patenting and clinical trials .
More info: This project has now finished, for more information please Download the Executive Summary
