Wednesday, 02 August 2023
Fundraising, Research
Fundraisers for My Name’5 Doddie Foundation visited the Neurology Centre in Craigavon Area Hospital to see how their funding is being used to help people across Northern Ireland (NI) with motor neuron disease (MND).
The Southern Health and Social Care Trust is the first site in NI to open as a centre for the MND-SMART clinical trial, which is led by the Euan MacDonald Centre at the University of Edinburgh, and co-funded by My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. The trial is testing how effective different drugs are at slowing down the disease and improving survival in people living with MND. The site in NI opened in February of this year and, so far, 12 people have been enrolled. The investigators will continue to enrol participants in the trial through the Trust until 2025.
Dr Raeburn Forbes, Consultant Neurologist and local Principal Investigator for the MND-SMART study said:
“It was a pleasure to welcome Stuart Thom, Mark Bailey and Paddy Johns to the Neurology centre on June 30th. Stuart and Paddy knew Doddie personally as competitors or team-mates and Mark has been a generous sponsor of the Foundation's activities through his company Next Gen Power UK."
We were able to show them how their generous funding is giving hope and advancing knowledge and treatment in this devastating condition. We are still enrolling participants from across NI to the trial, which we hope will bring us one step closer to finding new treatments for MND.
Stuart Thom added: “As a supporter of the foundation since Doddie’s diagnosis in 2017 I was delighted to visit Craigavon and see the clinic and meet the staff. It is nice to see how some of the money raised via the fundraising events is being utilised to help find a cure.”
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