‘GLUTAMATE TRANSPORTER’ COULD BE KEY TO
BETTER DRUGS FOR LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE

TUCSON, Ariz., Nov. 15, 2001 — Researchers funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association say that finding new drugs to clean up toxic levels of the nervous system chemical glutamate could be the key to treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — a fatal, paralyzing disease that currently has no effective treatment.

In ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), muscle-controlling nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord — motor neurons — are attacked and destroyed. In most cases, paralysis and death occur within three to five years of diagnosis.

In a presentation at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego Tuesday, Jeffrey Rothstein and Margaret Sutherland showed that a genetic boost of a "glutamate transporter" protein called EAAT2 offered mice with ALS more protection against the disease than any drug treatment that’s been tested so far. In the mice, it extended life several times as long as did riluzole, the only currently approved drug for ALS.

Rothstein is co-director of the MDA/ALS Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Sutherland is an MDA grantee at George Washington University in Washington.

In the mouse study, Rothstein said, "With the glutamate transporter, we can increase mouse survival not by two weeks, but by a minimum of two months and a maximum of one and a half years."

By comparison, Rilutek (riluzole), which partially blocks glutamate, extends life by just a few months in people with ALS and by just two weeks in mice with the disease.

Rothstein and Sutherland hope to find more potent drugs that will activate EAAT2 to clean up the excess glutamate found in ALS.

MDA is the nation’s leading voluntary health organization addressing ALS. MDA works to defeat more than 40 neuromuscular diseases through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive services, and far-reaching professional and public health education.

For more information about MDA’s ALS program, call (800) 572-1717 or go to www.als-mda.org on the Internet.