Professor Linda Greensmith is the Head of the Graeme Watts Laboratories at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London.
Prof Greensmith founded the Graeme Watts Laboratory in 1999, supported by funds left to Brain Research UK by the family of Graeme Watts, who died of motor neuron disease (MND). Graeme’s family wanted these funds to support research to improve the basic understanding of MND and to develop therapeutic strategies. No-one at the Institute was strongly focused on MND at that time and Prof Greensmith was recruited and awarded the Graeme Watts Senior Research Fellowship with the goal of setting up a lab to take forward research into this devastating disease.
The Graeme Watts Laboratories are now at the forefront of research into MND, and drug compounds that started life there have already undergone international clinical trials in MND patients. We continue to fund work in the Graeme Watts Laboratory using funds from the endowment established in Graeme’s name. In 2026 Prof Greensmith and Dr Bryson were awarded funding for this programme grant to help people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) regain muscle control using a stem cell and light-based therapy.
Motor neuron disease (MND) describes a group of diseases affecting a particular group of neurons (called motor neurons) in the brain and spinal cord that send nerves out to skeletal muscles to control their function.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common form of adult MND. It is a fatal, rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease in which motor neurons progressively die, resulting in muscle paralysis. MND therefore robs patients of their ability to walk, talk and eventually to swallow and breathe. There is no cure for these diseases and patients with ALS typically survive for only two to five years from diagnosis.
Currently, there are no treatments that can stop or reverse ALS in the majority of patients. Despite great advances being made in developing a gene therapy for ALS, this approach will only be applicable for the 10% of patients with an inherited form of the disease and, to date, a gene therapy has only been developed for a single form of inherited ALS, representing only 2% of the patient population. Given this, Prof Greensmith and her research team is developing a completely new way to restore muscle function that, if successful, will benefit all ALS patients, irrespective of the cause.
In earlier research, the team showed that in mice, specially modified nerve cells called motor neurons, created from stem cells and made sensitive to light, can be transplanted into nerves where they can grow and reconnect with muscles that have lost their nerve supply. As these cells are sensitive to light, these neurons can be activated by light, causing the muscles they connect with to contract and produce force.
The team has now created similar light-sensitive human nerve cells and shown that they can survive in a mouse model of ALS. They also found a way to prevent the body from rejecting these transplanted cells, which means it may be possible to create a ready-made treatment that could work for many patients.
However, more work is needed before this can be tested in people.
This project will (1) Improve the human nerve cells so they can be tested more efficiently with different light-based methods; (2) Make the donor cells suitable for any patient, so a universal "off-the-shelf" treatment can be developed; and (3) Test the treatment in detail to see how well it works and compare different ways of activating the cells, directly or through the skin.
This project aims to create a system that allows muscles to be precisely controlled using light, potentially helping patients regain independent movement. This research could lead to a completely new type of therapy for people with paralysis, not only ALS patients, but also patients paralysed for other reasons, for example following spinal cord injury.
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