The ALS Association has launched a petition calling on public and private health insurers, as well as federal and state governments to prohibit the use of arbitrary, discriminatory value assessments that limit access to ALS drugs.

The ALS community has the opportunity to encourage The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve Amylyx Pharmaceutical’s new drug application for AMX0035.

Carianne “Cari” Meystrik is a true hero to her family, friends and the entire staff at The ALS Association Tennessee Chapter. Cari and her husband Chris had only been married for 6 ½ years when she was diagnosed with ALS in 1998 while pregnant with her fourth child. The couple thought their dreams of growing old together and raising a family were over. Instead, despite the various obstacles brought on by ALS, the Meystrik family has had incredible adventures and made precious memories that carry them through the tough times.

The ALS Association has awarded $3.6 million to four interventional trials through its new Clinical Trial Awards program. The Clinical Trial Awards program is open to industry and academic investigators proposing novel or repositioning approaches for ALS.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) issued a request for input recently to help guide its work supporting ALS research. The ALS Association is submitting input telling the agency that speed matters. We are encouraging NINDS and the rest of NIH to focus to find ways to use research to advance the health of people with ALS as quickly as possible.

​Each year on February 11, the world celebrates International Day of Women and Girls in Science Day. This year we’re shining a spotlight on Dr. Allison Ebert, Ph.D., Leadership Team Member at The ALS Association Wisconsin Chapter & professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Ebert breaks down the challenges of finding effective therapies for people living with ALS and the important work happening in her lab.

The Institute of Clinical and Economic Review, commonly known as ICER, has opened a review of AMX0035 to determine the cost-effectiveness of the drug. The ALS Association is committed to making sure ICER’s review does not discriminate against people with ALS and that its analysis does not prevent people with ALS from accessing promising treatments.

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.