The Alan Davidson Foundation has renewed its generous backing for motor neuron disease (MND) research at Oxford, pledging another three years of funding for the ACORN study, building on its original gift in 2021.
Run by the Oxford Motor Neuron Disease Centre in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, and supported by Oxford University Hospitals and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, ACORN tracks people who carry genes linked to MND and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). By pinpointing the earliest biological shifts that precede any symptoms, the team hopes to deepen scientific insight and open the door to timelier, more effective treatments.
With this renewed commitment, the foundation will continue to underwrite a full‑time project manager to steer the study’s expansion, and will share the cost of a research fellow for the next research phase.
Jane Craik, Trustee of the Alan Davidson Foundation, said: “We are very proud to be supporting this project to make MND preventable. It’s been very gratifying to see the project from its inception to where it is today under the leadership of Professor Kevin Talbot and Professor Martin Turner. The whole team working on this is first class and I know Alan would be particularly enthused that the project is bringing the international scientific community together.”
Two years in, ACORN has enrolled 100 participants, people living with, or genetically at risk of, inherited MND and FTD, along with healthy volunteers. Using brain imaging, activity trackers and pooled data, researchers are mapping how the disease first manifests, long before clinical signs emerge. The study now collaborates with major global initiatives, and early findings were presented at the MND Association International Symposium in Montreal.
Professor Kevin Talbot, Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and founder of the Oxford MND Care and Research Centre, noted: “The ACORN project is leading the way in efforts to find early interventions for MND and working towards the goal of making the disease preventable one day. Support from the Alan Davidson Foundation has been critical to building the project team. I feel sure that Alan would have been excited to see the progress we have already made.”
