The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Michelle Donelan, has appointed Professor Patrick Chinnery as the next Executive Chair of the MRC. Michelle Donelan said: “Professor Chinnery brings a wealth of experience as a practicing clinician and an already established and valued member of the Medical Research Council. “By heading up one of the […]

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the result of the immune system mistakenly attacking the brain and the spinal cord, resulting in symptom flares known as relapses as well as longer-term degeneration, known as progression. Despite the development of effective treatments for relapses, some of which were pioneered at the University of Cambridge, none can reliably prevent […]

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is a leading cause of death and disability in people under 40 in the UK and can cause a range of serious and lifelong health issues for people who survive, including dementia, epilepsy and poor mental health. Until now, data collected by individual research projects investigating TBI has […]

Mild traumatic brain injury – concussion – results from a blow or jolt to the head. It can occur as a result of a fall, a sports injury or from a cycling accident or car crash, for example. But despite being labelled ‘mild’, it is commonly linked with persistent symptoms and incomplete recovery. Such symptoms […]

The RESCUE-ASDH trial, funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), involved 40 centres in 11 countries and involved 450 patients. The results of the trial are published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and are announced at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. […]

The discovery is a step towards harnessing the protective effects of cooling the brain to treat patients with acute brain injury and even to prevent dementias, such as Alzheimer’s. When the body cools down significantly, it increases its levels of RBM3, a molecule known as the cold shock protein – a phenomenon first observed in […]

Researchers have developed a new type of neural implant that could restore limb function to amputees and others who have lost the use of their arms or legs.

The Swedish Medical Products Agency has granted approval for the trial to proceed; ethical approval has already been obtained from the Swedish Ethics Review Authority. The team, led from Lund University in Sweden, is poised to begin recruitment. STEM-PD uses human embryonic stem cells, a type of cell that can turn into almost any type of […]

In research published today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, the team analysed data from the UK Biobank and found impairment in several areas, such as problem solving and number recall, across a range of conditions. The findings raise the possibility that in the future, at-risk patients could be screened to […]