11 February 2025 News
This International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the MND Association is once again celebrating the many outstanding women researching motor neurone disease (MND) in the UK.
We proudly fund female researchers at different stages of their careers who are investigating all aspects of MND – from better understanding of the disease through to hunting for new treatments.
Dr Emily Mayberry is a Senior Clinical Psychologist & Clinical Research Academy Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Dr Mayberry’s research, iDeliver MND: improving delivery of psychological care in MND, is funded by the MND Association and looks to improve the delivery of psychological care in MND. The aim is for this work is to be able to provide recommendations about how best to run MND psychology services to provide the care people with MND and their carers need.
I've always been interested in science. I've had a bit of a meandering path to get to where I am, but it's always been science based. The joy of science is very real for me. I think there are additional challenges for women, in terms of mentors and supervisors and those role models going through. For me, having male mentors and supervisors who have advocated for me and helped me find a path through has been really important, but also beginning to have some of those female mentors and also colleagues who understand the challenges that women in science face, and being able to support one another has been a really important part of that.
Recent evidence from the Commend study led by Professor Rebecca Gould, also supported by the MND Association, indicates that psychological interventions can support people living with MND and can improve quality of life. This new work explores how best to deliver psychological care in the UK.
Also funded by the MND Association is PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, Nina Mitic. Nina’s study, Developing remote monitoring tools for assessing disease progression in MND, looks at investigating whether MND causes unique changes in physical behaviours and if these can be used to predict if someone has MND and how quickly it may progress.
We’ve reviewed all the literature that looked at digital devices, like iPhones, accelerometers, physical activity monitors and are looking at how we can measure physical activity or physical behaviour in people with MND. Predictably, our study shows that when we measure physical activity with these monitors, measurements decrease as MND progresses and muscle weakness progresses – but importantly we also found that the outcome measures we're deriving from these devices correlate well with ALSFRS-R. A good next step will be to try and find something that's more sensitive in detecting how the disease progresses than what we're currently using. We're hoping that in the future, with more studies, we'll be able to find something that can help reduce the burden of clinical trials by making sample size smaller or reducing the length of clinical trials.
As of December 2024, the Association was funding 133 research grants to a total of £24.2 million, including support for a significant number of female researchers.
Women are playing a crucial role at the forefront of MND research, working to make a better future for people with MND.
Listen to Dr Mayberry talking about managing emotions on our podcast, MND Matters