CMN research is going well overall. It is extremely busy as always, with lots of trying to get money from grant funders, lots of trying to publish papers, and lots of trying to get experiments finished. We are very lucky still to be based in the Crick Institute which has really fantastic scientific facilities and where research into CMN is valued.
This year the team has just published a really important paper looking at people who hadn’t had a gene identified in their skin – in other words they didn’t have either the NRAS spelling mistake gene changes or the BRAF spelling mistake gene change. This study was co-led by Dr Sara Barberan Martin (senior post-doc) and Dr Satyamaanasa Polubothu (now an independent group leader). – you can see a summary of this here.
This year also marked the start of Morgan Zolkwer’s PhD studies into the psychological aspects of living with CMN. Morgan was funded for the first six months by Caring Matters Now and is now funded by external grant money. Thank you to you all for this essential funding. Morgan has been in clinic since January and lots of you will either have met him or be due to meet him when you come up. He is a great new asset to the team.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the fundraising and therefore the research this year, and a very special thank you to the patients who have joined in the research personally by contributing samples at important times. We could not do it without you.
Veronica Kinsler
*For a Plain Language Summary of the BRAF Fusion Paper click here.
