Via Scoop.it – ALS Lou Gehrig’s Disease
A $25 million gift has enabled Johns Hopkins to establish a new center to develop novel therapies for the neurodegenerative disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS. Much of the center’s research will focus on using stem cells individually derived from ALS patients to develop new model systems to investigate how nerve cells degenerate, as tools to screen new drug therapies, and to develop stem cell therapies as transplants to potentially slow or reverse the disease. The new center, dedicated March 21 and formally known as the Michael S. and Karen G. Ansari ALS Center for Cell Therapy and Regeneration Research at Johns Hopkins, is named for its benefactors: Michael and Karen Ansari. Michael Ansari is the founder, chairman and CEO of M.I.C. Industries. The gift, representing a five-year commitment, will fund a variety of efforts that aim to eventually cure ALS. The disease targets motor neurons, a type of nerve cell that controls muscle movement, and affects about three out of every 100,000 individuals. “Despite knowing about this disease for decades and the large number of clinical trials that have been completed, we still have little in our arsenal to treat it,” says Nicholas J. Maragakis, M.D., an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, co-medical director of the ALS Clinic and director of the new center. “We are now able to think out of the box about this disease. The goals of a center will focus on the use of stem cells as tools to foster aggressive programs in discovering the underlying mechanisms behind what causes ALS and rapidly translating these discoveries to the patients in our clinic.”
Via www.hopkinsmedicine.org
ALS Research News 