Board Member & physician at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Dr. Ebert breaks down the challenges of finding effective therapies for ALS and how you can support the important work happening in her lab.

We talked with Dr. Yuka Koike, postdoctoral fellow working under her mentor, Dr. Leonard Petrucelli in the Petrucelli lab at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, to learn more about her and her ALS research focused on revealing how TDP-43 mediated RNA dysfunction contributes to ALS/FTD disease.

The Pooled Resource Open-Access ALS Clinical Trials (PRO-ACT) database recently received the Healey Center International Prize for Innovation in ALS, a $50,000 prize. The database is the largest collection of ALS clinical trial data and includes de-identified records of 11,000 patients from 23 clinical trials.

People with ALS and their caregivers who participated in a recent ALS Focus survey said that telehealth appointments improved their quality of life by saving them time and money, and that the appointments are just as good as in-person health care visits.

Research funded by The ALS Association has found that NFL players are four times more likely to be diagnosed with ALS and die from the disease than people who never played in the league, adding to the mounting evidence of a link between playing football and ALS.

We talked with Dr. Janani Parameswaran, postdoctoral fellow from Dr. Jie Jiang’s lab at Emory University in Atlanta, to learn more about her and her ALS research focused on unraveling the underlying disease mechanism.

We asked the FDA to treat the approval review process of AMX0035 with urgency. Specifically, we sent a letter to FDA asking the agency to conduct a Priority Review of Amylyx’s New Drug Application (NDA) for AMX0035 and then approve it. The Priority Review is an expedited review process, as opposed to the Standard Review process, which can take upwards of a year after the agency accepts submission of the NDA.

We talked with Dr. Caroline McHutchison, postdoctoral fellow from the University of Edinburgh, to learn more about her research focused on examining the presence, onset, and evolution of cognitive and behavioral symptoms, relative to motor symptom onset and diagnosis of ALS.

Amylyx recently filed a New Drug Application for AMX0035, a promising new drug that has proven safe and effective at slowing progression of ALS and extending the life of people living with the disease. The ALS Association has called on the FDA to approve the application with urgency.

The ALS Association believes that upon diagnosis, people living with ALS/MND and their families must have the right to access genetic counseling and testing, current education about clinical genetics in ALS/MND and safeguards against genetic discrimination. Thanks to a sponsorship from Biogen, the diagnostic company Invitae is offering genetic testing and post-test counseling to people with ALS and their families at no charge.

We talked with Dr. Marion Sommers-Spijkerman, postdoctoral fellow from the Netherlands, to learn more about her research focused on developing and evaluating a guided web-based self-compassion intervention aimed at reducing self-stigma in people living with ALS and their primary caregivers.

The National ALS Registry and Biorepository was created back in 2007 to help understand how prevalent ALS is, who is developing ALS, and what the possible causes are. Its mission is also to help support researchers in discovering treatments and cures and in preventing ALS.

After Amylyx’s announced that it intends to file a new drug application for AMX0035, The ALS Association immediately called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve the treatment for all people with ALS as soon as possible. Connecting ALS talked to the team at Amylyx to learn about the path ahead for access to AMX0035.

There is a lot to do, and this grounded focus of making ALS livable helps us hold everyone—ourselves, the FDA, and the research community—accountable to real impacts on real people with ALS and the time it takes to deliver those impacts. This week has been a big step forward for the ALS community, and we will continue urgently working to keep the momentum going.

We recently talked with Dr. Yichen Li, postdoctoral fellow from the Ichida Lab at the University of Southern California to learn about her unique project focused on the efficacy of suppressing a gene called SYF2 as a therapeutic strategy for diverse forms of ALS. 

Dr. Jeffrey Rothstein, professor of neurology and neuroscience and the founding director of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Dr. Alyssa Coyne, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, discuss their recent publication of research identifying a cellular defect common in ALS and what it means for research into the disease going forward.

We recently spoke with Nishal to learn more about him and his unique project focused on providing an assistive communication device for people with severe speech and motor impairment due to ALS using an intracortical Brain Computer Interface (iBCI).

In very powerful testimony, members of the ALS community asked members of Congress to ensure the FDA acts with greater speed and regulatory flexibility during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee.

As part of this year’s National Advocacy Conference, Dr. Bryan Traynor, senior investigator and chief of neuromuscular diseases at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging presented a case study to the ALS community to help better understand what we know today and what we are working toward for the future relating to genetics and prevention. ALS prevention has not only been a priority for Traynor, but for the ALS community at large.

Dr. Lauren Gittings, whose award was made possible directly through funds provided by The ALS Association Oregon and SW Washington Chapter, is a postdoctoral fellow from the Sattler Lab at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. We recently spoke with Lauren to learn more about her and her unique project focused on identifying cellular and molecular changes that underlie cognitive impairment in ALS patients carrying the C9orf72 (C9) repeat expansion mutation.