Collaborations Neuromuscular disorders

Project MinE uitklapper, klik om te openen

Project MinE is a worldwide groundbreaking research aimed at finding the genetic causes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It is initiated by two Dutch ALS patients together with Prof. Leonard van den Berg and Prof. Jan Veldink. To understand the genetic basis of ALS and ultimately find a cure for this devastating fatal neuromuscular disease, Project MinE aims to compare the DNA of at least 15,000 ALS patients and 7,500 control subjects. All 22,500 DNA profiles, collected worldwide, will be analysed with whole genome sequencing, reading each of the 6 billion letters of the human genome. This results in petabytes of genetic data. Analyses of the data are conducted at UMC Utrecht Brain Center.

ENCALS uitklapper, klik om te openen

The European Network for the Cure of ALS (ENCALS) is a network established by ALS Centres in Europe. ENCALS currently includes more than 35 ALS Centres and is still growing. Within ENCALS, the centres increasingly collaborate in their research to find a cure for ALS. Prof. Leonard van den Berg is chair of ENCALS.European collaborative research projects of ALS UMC Utrecht Brain Center is coordinator of awarded EU grants (FP7 Euro-MOTOR (systems biology), JPND SOPHIA (biomarkers)) and participates in the international collaborative studies STRENGTH, Needs in ALS and ALS-CarE. More information on these projects can be found here.

Genetic analyses uitklapper, klik om te openen

Regarding genetic analyses outside of Utrecht, we collaborate with Ciska Wijmenga (Department of Medical Genetics, UMC Groningen), Bas Heijmans (BBMRI Rainbow project, Leiden UMC), and Frank Baas (AMC Amsterdam).