Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $362,466 over three years to Alysson Muotri, assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. The new funds will help support Muotri’s generation of a new research model of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease).

MDA has awarded a research development grant totaling $180,000 over three years to Adrian Israelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, Calif. The funds will help support Israelson’s study of the underlying mechanisms governing motor neuron (nerve cell) death in SOD1-related familial ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

MDA has awarded a grant totaling $347,094 over three years to François Berthod, a professor in the department of surgery at Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The funds will help support Berthod's study of the underlying molecular mechanisms and disease process in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

ALS is characterized by the degeneration of motor neurons (nerve cells that control muscle movement) in the spinal cord and brain.

MDA has awarded a clinical research training grant totaling $180,000 to clinical research fellow James Berry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. The grant will support completion of a two-year fellowship during which Berry plans to study the effects of a drug called ISIS-333611 in familial, or inherited, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Ellen Barrett, professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Miami (Florida) Miller School of Medicine was awarded an MDA grant totaling $297,102 over three years. The funds will support Barrett's study of the disease process and potential therapies in familial, or inherited, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

MDA awarded Albert La Spada, chief of the division of genetics in the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego, $330,000 to study what causes nerve cells called motor neurons to die in spinal-bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) and other neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

MDA awarded $375,000 to Daniela Zarnescu, assistant professor in neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., to conduct gene and drug discovery research in a drosophila fruit fly model that carries a mutation in the TDP43 gene associated with a genetic form of human ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

MDA awarded a grant totaling $347,832 to Shanthini Sockanathan, associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, for research into the molecular causes of nerve cell, or motor neuron, degeneration in diseases including ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

MDA awarded $358,653 to Wilfried Rossoll, assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, for research into the effects on nerve cells, or "motor neurons," of toxic TDP43 protein, implicated in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

Daniel Offen, head of the neurology laboratory at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, received an MDA grant totaling $359,700 for research into a combined cell and gene therapy approach for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).