20th July 2023
Fundraisers from the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation have visited the Neurology Centre in Craigavon Area Hospital to see how their funding is being used to help people across 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 sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and funded by a generous grant from the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. The trial is testing how effective different drugs are at slowing down the disease and improving survival and opened for recruitment back in February this year. So far 12 people have commenced treatment as part of the trial, and 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 Foundations 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 fund raising events is being utilised to help find a cure.”
People with MND who are interested in taking part in the trial can register via www.mnd-smart.org.
For more information about the Doddie Weir Foundation see https://www.myname5doddie.co.uk/ and for information on MND_SMART see https://mnd-smart.org/.