Years ago, Australian scientist Justin Yerbury had an idea he hoped would lead to a treatment for motor neurone disease.

He wanted to find and systematically destroy the problematic proteins that mutate inside the nerve cells of people with the fatal progressive condition, eventually causing muscle weakness, paralysis and death.

This would be a radical undertaking: Justin was fond of saying there "are more proteins in your cells than there are stars in the sky," so even finding the correct malfunctioning proteins among the billions contained within each cell would be a mammoth task.

In his world-leading lab at the University of Wollongong, he was given a $1 million grant by the Fight MND charity to do this work in 2020.

But he died of the progressive and fatal disease which has killed

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