2019 UK Biobank of the Year Award for MND Association

Congratulations to the MND Association for being awarded the prestigious accolade of 2019 UK Biobank of the Year Award.

The award recognises the MND Association’s work on the UK MND Collections, a bank of biological samples collected from people living with MND and controls between 2003 and 2012, when the MND Association collected over 3,000 blood samples from people with MND, their families and spouse controls.

These samples are stored as DNA (at the Centre for Integrated Genomic Medical Research (CIGMR), University of Manchester) and a subset of these are available as EBV-transformed lymphocytes stored at Porton Down near to Salisbury, UK.

In 2015 the MND Association carefully selected 193 of these transformed cell lines to create larger, fully authenticated, quality tested cell banks (known as the familial range). The cell lines selected were created from people with the rare, inherited form of MND/ALS, also known as ‘familial MND’ and a small number of control participants. 

The European Collection of Authenticated Cell Cultures (ECACC) creates and maintains these cell line banks, with all 193 selected cell lines freely available through our website for those researching MND/ALS or related conditions.

Further information

To read the full story on the MND Association website, please click here. 

You can find out which MND Collections Cell lines are stocked by ECACC here.  

Learn more about ECACC's work with the (MND) Association and the MND Collections Cell lines by clicking on and viewing the posters below: