Professor Linda Greensmith

Professor Linda Greensmith works at the IoN’s Graham Watts laboratory. She is investigating the cause, development and possible treatments for motor neurone disease.

Recently, Professor Greensmith demonstrated that a new drug compound may slow the progression of this disease in laboratory models of the disease.

This has resulted in the initiation of a clinical drug trial in patients, currently underway by colleagues in the USA. However, this is only one part of the jigsaw as there are many different genes involved in this disease that still need to be investigated.

Further funding is required to understand the role of these genes in producing MND and what actually goes wrong with the cells and cause them to die. This will allow other potential drug treatments to be developed which can then be used in further clinical trials to ultimately find a cure for this devastating disease.