This week The ALS Association launched a major initiative, investing $3 million ($1 million per year over three years) in the first-ever ALS Platform Trial. The trial will take place at the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General in collaboration with the Barrow Neurological Institute and the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS).

Learn more about the trials HERE.

A "platform trial" is a clinical trial in which multiple treatments are tested and evaluated simultaneously. This speeds up the process of testing therapeutic treatments. For example, while it can typically take up to 12 years to test 10 compounds, with a platform trial, researchers can do it in four years.

New treatments are added to the platform trial as they become available, thereby decreasing the gap in time from identification of an exciting therapy to testing. Shared infrastructure, common data and sample collection processes, and central governance within the Platform trial will lead to operational efficiencies and time and cost savings.

The platform trial format has already been successful in the cancer field.

This investment builds on the Association’s long history of supporting research being done at Massachusetts General - over $9 million just in the last 10 years.