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Why COVID-19 Treatments Came in Months, While ALS Research Takes Years
For those who have been waiting years for a cure for ALS, it can be frustrating to hear about the rapid development of treatments for COVID-19. There are many reasons why ALS is different than COVID-19, as stated in this March 2020 article:
Richard
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5 Replies
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A timely article on this subject: COVID’s all-hands-on-deck approach should be standard for rare diseases
Key quotes from this article:
“…this process of turning observations into treatments and cures is called “translation.” For patients suffering from diseases with no treatment — or treatments that simply don’t work well enough — the translational process cannot happen fast enough. They are dying of what I call “translational disease,” or inefficiencies in the translational process.”
“Platform Vector Gene Therapy (PaVe-GT) PaVe-GT epitomizes the same approaches that enabled teams around the world to bring COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines to millions of people. These include collaboration, innovation in clinical trials and recruitment, open data sharing and the use of existing resources and networks — all in support of accomplishing a collective goal as rapidly as humanly possible.”
Richard
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Covid-19 is a due to a pathogen and for million years the bodies of beings have learned to mitigate similar attacks.
What is ALS? What causes ALS? Since 3 years I have read thousand scientific articles on ALS and I never saw any convincing explanation about its etiology. -
In the above reply, Platform Vector Gene Therapy (PaVe-GT) PaVe-GT is described. One aspect is data sharing. The Roche Canada Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI CoE) supports data sharing. Sharing knowledge and multi-disciplinary expertise through open science can improve public and private collaboration, and contribute to a learning health system that better informs patient care.
The Roche Canada Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI CoE) in collaboration with Answer ALS and EverythingALS to launch an initiative called the End ALS Challenge, with the support of ALS Society of Canada, Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) and NetraMark Corp. The goal is to surface insights through an open data competition that connects the global AI and neuroscience communities to better understand the overall biology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and improve diagnosis and drug discovery for ALS patients.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So, the ability to perceive or think differently is important. Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.
Richard
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Thanks Richard,
I wish this initiative will attract the interest of young scientists.
In the past the PRO-ACT database was compiled with a similar goal. Many scientists studied it and there were good results at predicting ALS progression. But the best parameters that enabled this prediction where often the age and the weight of the patient.
In other words all those AI competitions can only (in my opinion) show some good correlation between the goal and the input parameters, thanks to funny mathematical techniques. It cannot discover new knowledge.
Indeed I strongly expect to be wrong.
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COVID-19 is an adenovirus and similar to some common cold virus. They have been studying adenovirus vaccines for over 30 years. Johnson and Johnson has a big stake in the COVID-19 vaccine that you get 1 shot for. The others that you get 2 shots for are mRNA treatments, which alters the DNA in your body to make its immune system to go into over-drive when it identifies any foreign virus.
ALS is a dysfunction in the DNA (theory based on modern research). ALS is much different than COVID-19. About 30K people in the US have ALS at any given time (estimates). World-wide, they say less than 1/2 of a million people are affected by ALS at any given moment.) IMO COVID-19 development was motivated politically as a crisis, and was justified because so many people got sick and died in just a short time.
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So basically we the folks with ALS should not hold out hope for a cure because we do not have enough of us suffering or losing our lives.
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“So basically we the folks with ALS should not hold out hope for a cure because we do not have enough of us suffering or losing our lives.”
Until the Govt makes a substantial commitment to solve the ALS issue, its going to get far less funding than other conditions like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and COVID. IMO they try to hide it more than they try to cure it at the congressional level. They spend like drunk sailors when a crisis comes up, contributing more money for a tunnel in San Francisco in a month than they give to cure ALS in one year.
The only way to move them is to embarrass them. They are pol’s and that’s the only thing that I feel will motivate them (so they can lie about how compassionate they are). Politicians are liars. In my 62 years, the one sure thing I have learned is embarrassed politicians spend like drunken sailors also.
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