Lou Gehrig's Disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurological disorder characterized by progressive degeneration of motor neuron cells in the spinal cord and brain, which ultimately results in paralysis and death. The disease takes its less-scientific name from Lou Gehrig, a baseball player with the New York Yankees in the late 1920s and 1930s, who was forced to retire in 1939 as a result of the loss of motor control caused by the disease.
In 1991, a team of researchers linked familial ALS to chromosome 21. Two years later, the SOD1 gene was identified as being associated with many cases of familial ALS. The enzyme coded for by SOD1 carries out a very important function in cells: it removes dangerous superoxide radicals by converting them into non-harmful substances. Defects in the action of this enzyme mean that the superoxide radicals attack cells from the inside, causing their death. Several different mutations in this enzyme all result in ALS, making the exact molecular cause of the disease difficult to ascertain.
Recent research has suggested that treatment with drugs called antioxidants may benefit ALS patients. However, since the molecular genetics of the disease are still unclear, a significant amount of research is still required to design other promising treatments for ALS.
Scientists at Scripps Research, with collaborators in Japan, have discovered how a "poisoned" form of a protein could set off a cascade of events that encourage the growth of some cancers.
Each year in the U.S., 5,000 patients receive a diagnosis of ALS, an incurable neurodegenerative disease that will likely kill them within two to five years.
A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a soft robotic wearable capable of significantly assisting upper arm and shoulder movement in people with ALS.
A new microscopic technique allows for the real-time study of RNA G-quadruplexes in living cells, with implications for the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
For people with paralysis caused by neurologic injury or disease-;such as ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), stroke, or spinal cord injury-;brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to restore communication, mobility, and independence by transmitting information directly from the brain to a computer or other assistive technology.
UVA Health researchers have discovered a molecule in the brain responsible for orchestrating the immune system's responses to Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), potentially allowing doctors to supercharge the body's ability to fight those and other devastating neurological diseases.
Researchers at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, located at the University of South Florida, successfully tested a protein that has the potential to aid in the development of a protein-based therapy for patients with ALS, a progressive nervous system disease, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
The University of Washington has joined the Alliance for Therapies in Neuroscience (ATN), a long-term research partnership between academia and industry geared to transform the fight against brain diseases and disorders of the central nervous system.
The immune system may play a fundamental role along with the central nervous system in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as "Lou Gehrig's disease," Mount Sinai researchers report.
Biomarkers that could be targets for novel drugs to treat glioblastoma brain tumors have been identified by investigators at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, providing hope for a cancer that is highly lethal.
A new initiative, Silence ALS, will develop experimental personalized therapies to treat patients with rare genetic forms of ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease).
Oregon State University scientists have discovered a new class of potential drug targets for people suffering from neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease.
The Cullen Education and Research Fund announced the recipients of the first CERF Medical Engineering Prize for ALS Research: Dr. Leigh Hochberg, Dr. Conor Walsh, and Dr. Sabrina Paganoni.
A new cloud-based data resource co-developed by scientists at Cedars-Sinai provides the research community with a comprehensive set of tools to help identify new subtypes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurological disorder.
Using an experimental drug, researchers were able to suppress a mutated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) gene.
Eikonoklastes Therapeutics, a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced it has completed a license with the University of California San Diego to add a novel gene therapy for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
The neuromuscular junction-;where nerves and muscle fibers meet-;is an essential synapse for muscle contraction and movement.
A team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital has shown that people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, who carry a mutation in the C9orf72 gene exhibit elevated levels of tau and phosphorylated tau protein in the motor cortex region of the brain.
A new study using genetically engineered mice and human cell and tissue samples has added to evidence that higher levels of inflammatory chemicals involved in fat metabolism occur in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neuromuscular disorder, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The highest-ever resolution imaging of an infectious prion provides the first atomic-level data of how these abnormal proteins are assembled to cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases in people and animals-; and how they can be potentially targeted by new therapies.