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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

More than 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. That’s 15 new cases per day. Upon diagnosis, each person is given between 2-5 years to live.

In the advanced stages of the disease, the cost for patient care averages $200,000 per year. The disease was discovered approximately 150 years ago, and ALS research in the last 10 years has been invigorated by the discovery of specific gene mutations which are responsible for the disease in a small proportion of people living with ALS. However, there remains no treatment proven to cure the disease or reverse its symptoms.

Source: The ALS Association

Opportunities

Hope Center investigators have characterized free radical pathways leading to nerve cell injury, identified a new class of free radical scavenger drugs with potential value for ALS and have examined connections between nerves and muscles. Current projects are testing newly discovered molecular pathways in ALS mice.