News

We officially opened our new SMA institute!
We had a wonderful Grand Opening of our new SMATHERIA Institute in Hannover with so many attendants. Very grateful about our excellent keynote speakers Dr. Melissa Bowerman & Boris Brückner and music by Matthias Brodowy.

Check out our new review about SMN phosphorylation
How is the SMN protein functionally regulated? Our review about the phospho-landscape of the survival of motoneuron protein (SMN) in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has been just published and tries to provide some answers.
New publication by SMATHERIA Scientist Dr. Nora Detering
Dr. Nora Detering is the first author on a publication about the "264th ENMC International Workshop: Multi-system involvement in spinal muscular atrophy Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, November 19th – 21st 2021". This publication highlights the importance of multisystem aspects of SMA and is the result of a inspiring workshop organized by ENMC and held in November 2021 in The Netherlands. Dr. Nora Detering had been invited as a Junior Investigator and the Prof. Dr. Peter Claus, Scientific Director of SMATHERIA, as a speaker.

Poster and talk of SMATHERIA members at the CureSMA Conference in Anaheim, USA
Ines Tapken presented a talk with recent data of SMATHERIA about Multi-Organ Proteome Landscape of SMA at the 26th Annual SMA Research and Clinical Care Meeting of CureSMA in Anaheim, California. The team also presented four research posters with novel data - all with translational impact.

New publication of SMATHERIA about SMA & ALS
We have published a new review about common mechanisms and molecules relevant for Spinal Muscular Atrophy and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
S. Kubinski & P. Claus (2022): Protein Network Analysis Reveals a Functional Connectivity of Dysregulated Processes in ALS and SMA. Neuroscience Insights 17: 1-10.
doi: 10.1177/26331055221087740. eCollection 2022.

Interviews about SMATHERIA
The SMN patient community has developed FaceSMA, an excellent and very informative website about SMA. There you can find a series of interviews with the SMATHERIA scientists Dr. Nora Detering and Prof. Peter Claus about many aspects of SMA, recent research, and the aims of the SMATHERIA Institute.

The Future is Now
The future is now: SMATHERIA has received a Nanopore sequencer as a generous donation from the Rotary Club Hannover-Ballhof today. This device enables us to directly investigate the transcriptomes of SMA tissues and cells in our lab. By analyzing all transcripts built up by cells, we can better understand the underlying pathological processes, characterize novel molecular targets for treatments and as biomarkers. At the end, this will help SMA kids and their families worldwide.
Photo from left to right: Volker Bartels, Club President Rotary Hannover-Ballhof; Peter Claus, SMATHERIA; Matthias Brodowy.