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Why in Sheffield?

The University of Sheffield is one of the UK's leading universities. Professor Pam Shaw who is the Chair of Neuroscience has dedicated her career to the care of MND patients and to research aiming to discover the causes of and better therapies for this condition. She is considered one of the top MND specialist in the world. She has received lately the Forbes Norris Prize (2007) from the International ALS/MND Alliance, the Jean Hunter prize (2006) from the Royal College of Physicians and the Sheila Essey Award (2001) from the American Academy of Neurology for her work. She chairs the Scientific Programme Committee for the annual International ALS/MND Symposium.   She already has a team of 75 researchers who are dispersed around different buildings at the   University of Sheffield and the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

The future Institute will be called the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN). This means that scientific developments emerging from experimental work will be harnessed and translated into effective therapies for patients in the clinic. Research at this Institute will also include work on other degenerative conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer, Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA - a childhood form of MND) and multiple sclerosis (MS), as they all have some common ground. Discoveries in one of these disorders could have an important treatment impact for the others.