On Sunday 27th May I will be heading a team from the Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases at Queen Square taking part in the BUPA London 10,000 for the 4th year in a row to raise funds for The National Brain Appeal [formally the National Hospital Development Foundation (NHDF)]. All money received will support research into serious muscle wasting neurological diseases in the Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases.

 

This year is particularly special as I plan to run with one of my patients Bill. Following successful treatment for muscle weakness which made it difficult for him even to walk, he can now run again and is celebrating by tackling the 10k!

 

The National Brain Appeal, the charity dedicated to raising funds for the hospital, worked with me over the last two years and we were successful in opening the UK’s first comprehensive Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases in Dec 2009. The new centre at 8-11 Queen Square has brought together the entire team of Queen Square experts in these fields, led by myself. It includes a clinical trials facility and IT systems to support the development of new treatments and facilitate translational research to benefit patient. The centre is a truly unique environment supporting young scientists to develop research programmes to find treatments for these serious diseases.

 

We urgently need to raise funds to support important clinical research in the new centre and in particular to support young scientists we are training. We have already raised funds for two young scientists. We had one hundred applications for these two posts and we would like to give a larger number of talented young scientists the opportunity to do research in these diseases in our new centre. So far we have raised £120,000 and I am personally committed to raising £1million towards a comprehensive programme for talented young scientists to join our team and help us drive the research to find treatments.

 

As you may be aware, neuromuscular neurological diseases are serious muscle wasting disorders which often affect children and young adults. There are over 100 neuromuscular diseases and common examples include Motor Neurone Disease, Polymyositis, Inclusion Body Myositis, Peripheral Neuropathy, Myaesthenia Gravis, Muscular Dystrophy and other life threatening diseases. They affect well over 100,000 people in the UK. For many of these diseases we still don’t have cures and we want to change this read more at www.cnmd.ac.uk

 

We do hope you will be able to support us and any donation, no matter how small, will be gratefully received.