Bec Daniher: Neale “very excited” about latest MND breakthrough

AFL legend and motor neuron disease campaigner Neale Daniher is “very excited” about the latest breakthrough in the fight against the insidious disease.

A new drug has found to slow the progression of the disease in trial patients.

Fight MND Foundation campaign director Bec Daniher told 3AW Mornings her father was buoyed by the promising news.

“Neale is very excited,” he said.

“We’re taking this as a very successful step but there’s a lot more steps we need to keep working through until we say MND has a cure.

“We’re holding our breath and hopefully we can progress the trial and hopefully this could potentially be something that can help stop (MND).

Ms Daniher confirmed the Fight MND Foundation contributed $500,000 to the trial.

“We’re hoping we can get it into a phase two drug trial,” she told Heidi Murphy.

“That would be a much more extensive trial with more people involved – it gets you a better view of whether it’s working right across the board with different people.

“We really want to continue to fund it and for everyone’s that donated (to the foundation), this is where the money is going.

“It’s fantastic that we’re able to show that their money is making a massive impact.”

But she said Neale Daniher wasn’t able to participate in the trial as there was a two-year restriction period from the time of diagnosis.

“A lot of clinical periods have an exclusion period from diagnosis,” she said.

“They restrict who can participate so they give (the trial) the best chance of being successful, Neale doesn’t fit those criteria but there are a lot of people in Australia who do.

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