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Avalon Ventures, a venture capital firm that has founded and/or funded more than 127 information technology and life sciences companies, and multinational pharma firm GSK have announced an expansion of their collaboration to fund and launch early-stage life science companies in the San Diego, California, area. The Avalon/GSK…

This week the ALS Association, whose mission is to lead the fight to treat and cure ALS through global research and nationwide advocacy, has highlighted important research from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society For Neuroscience, an event that took place in Chicago, Oct. 17–21. This meeting is the premiere venue…

Some forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) could actually be caused by an infectious virus, with scientists reporting that human endogenous retrovirus-K (HERV-K), normally dormant, has been found in an active form in the postmortem brain cells of certain individuals with ALS. Experiments using the active HERV-K in cells grown in…

The winners of the DREAM ALS Stratification Prize4Life Challenge were recently announced by Prize4Life, Sage Bionetworks and the DREAM community. The challenge is a global data analysis competition designed to computationally determine the different subgroups of patients who suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). There is currently…

A large-sample study investigating a possible association between anxiety-depressive disorders in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease (ALS/MND) in the People’s Republic of China was recently conducted. The study, entitled “Frequency and risk factor analysis of cognitive and anxiety-depressive disorders in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease,” was published in…

A recent study from researchers in Canada and Japan describes a new possible target for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The paper, titled “Ubiquilin-2 drives NF-κB activity and cytosolic TDP-43 aggregation in neuronal cells,” appeared on Oct. 31 in the journal Molecular Brain.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) all share a disease hallmark, the aggregation of “misfolded” proteins. Understanding the molecular processes underlying protein aggregation and how it leads to disease is an important step toward developing new therapies. Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge, in…

Japanese researchers have found possible biomarkers that could aid in the early detection of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The report, titled “Identification of plasma microRNAs as a biomarker of sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis” appeared on Oct. 24 in the journal Molecular Brain. In ALS…

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied the effect of the hormone serotonin in the regeneration of motor neurons after spinal cord injury that may one day hold implications in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), part of a large group of motor neuron diseases. The research paper, entitled “Serotonin Promotes Development…

Because amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is such a devastating disease, there is a need for novel and efficacious therapies and several studies hypothesize that growth hormone may be one of them. In a new review paper titled “The neuroprotective effects of human growth hormone as a potential treatment for amyotrophic lateral…