Making our funds work to help

Wonderful story of deaf basketball team: Tanya Hutchens

LONDON’S up and coming deaf basketball team are settling into their new Brent home, and are on the hunt for new players as the season gets into full swing.

The Deaf London Lions basketball club have been training at Preston Manor High School in Wembley for two months, and have been working feverishly alongside Brent Council to promote the sport among the borough’s deaf community.

The club compete in the London Amateur League, also taking part in deaf tournaments around Europe, and club captain Ramas Rentelis now hopes they can bring the sport to the wider deaf community in the borough.

“Until now, basketball has not been too popular with deaf people, but I think that is changing now, and it’s becoming similar to within the hearing community,” said Rentelis.

“Some deaf schools are asking us to give a taste of basketball, and we are also part of the West proActivity project, which provides sessions for deaf youth groups.

“We want to build relationships and offer basketball skills to deaf primary schools, and offer a fun sport to boys and girls at a grassroots level.

“We also want to work closely with major hearing basketball organisations – the national governing bodies such as England basketball and Basketball Scotland, to try and raise awareness and support.”

The club has been together for two years, with some of the players representing their countries at the recent Deaflympic Games in Taiwan in September.

They cater for deaf and hearing impaired men, women and junior players, and beginners are also encouraged to attend.

Ian Carpenter, Sports Development officer for disabled young people at Brent Council said: “It’s really great that the Lions are now based in Brent, it gives the deaf community of the borough a fantastic opportunity to compete and play in an all-deaf sports team.

Deaf Sports Awards 2009 (video)

Hutchens Charity 2010 celebrates the work of the MS Society of Canada

As 2009 comes to an end, the Multiple Sclerosis Society has taken stock of some of the research highlights of the year that was and is looking ahead to 2010.

Among its priorities for 2010 is a call for grant proposals to investigate the potential link between chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) and multiple sclerosis (MS). The society has issued an international call for grant applications to look at the CCSVI hypothesis in MS.

“Working with MS Societies around the world, an international panel will be convened to conduct a joint expedited review of the grant applications submitted in order to ensure a coordinated, strategic approach to funding the best research examining the CCSVI hypothesis in 2010,” a statement from the NMSS notes.

The controversial hypothesis proposes that narrowing in the major veins draining the brain, called CCSVI, may be an early step in the disease process causing MS, and early work suggests that these lesions may respond to angioplasty. A pilot, open-label study published in December in the Journal of Vascular Surgery by lead author Paolo Zamboni, MD, director of the Vascular Diseases Center at the University of Ferrara, Italy, showed in a series of 65 patients that endovascular treatment of strictures in the extracranial cerebrospinal veins was safe in MS patients and may provide neurologic benefit.

Dr. Zamboni emphasized that their work is preliminary and urgently requires replication. “What we know is that MS is very complex and multifactorial,” Dr. Zamboni told Medscape Neurology at that time. “We have identified an unknown factor and possible treatment for that factor.”

Already, work to discover the prevalence of CCSVI in MS patients is under way, and treatment trials are being planned.

“We are interested in more research because obviously [these are] very preliminary findings about CCSVI. The society is certainly inviting investigators to apply for grant funding so that we can further investigate this and provide the appropriate guidance for people with MS,” Patricia O’Looney, MD, vice president of biomedical research at the NMSS in New York City, told Medscape Neurology.

There has been a great deal of public interest, particularly in Canada, where media reports and a documentary profiled Dr. Zamboni and colleagues’ work and MS rates are among the highest in the world.

“People with MS have been pursuing this and perhaps having unnecessary surgery, which carries a risk to it because it is invasive, but also we want to respond to any possible clue that may help us help people with MS or help us understand it.”

Lots of research in other directions is also being funded, she hastened to add, with the regular grant deadline coming up on February 3, 2010. “That’s all top priority as well.”

Mount Sinai Research: Sandy Hutchens

Research Creates The Best Medicine is the name of our campaign in support of research at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital.

In scientific circles, the institute is known simply as “the Lunenfeld.” In these same circles, and well beyond, it is also known as one of the world’s top 10 biomedical research centres.

This is where some of the best minds in science today lead research in diabetes, cancer biology, epidemiology, stem cell research, women’s and infants’ health, neurobiology and systems biology.