The Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association has been awarded the prestigious 2019 UK Biobank of the year award. 

The UK Biobank of the Year was announced at the UK Biobanking Showcase on Tuesday 19th November 2019, an event hosted by the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre (TDCC), held this year at the University of Nottingham.

The national accolade is in recognition of the MND Association’s work on the UK MND Collections, previously called the UK MND DNA Bank – a resource 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 Public Health England’s Culture Collections.

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 available through the website for those researching MND/ALS or related conditions. You can learn more about the MND Collections Cell lines stocked by ECACC here.

You can find out more about the MND Association and the UK Biobank of the Year Award here.