It’s Been a Week of Voices and Progress

This past week was filled with voices. No, I wasn’t hearing voices in my head. But everything seemed to involve a voice. Let me explain. An action hero uses his voice I watched the newly released documentary “Val,” currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. By the time the final…

Completing their version of 102 Olympic events — including archery, diving, and fencing — in 17 days, Stuart Bates and Charlotte Nichols raised some £150,000 (about $207,000) for the U.K.’s Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association. The Oxfordshire duo wound up their grueling challenge, thought to be the first of…

Registration is now open for Global Genes‘ 2021 RARE Patient Advocacy Summit. This year’s hybrid event will be livestreamed from California Sept. 27-29, and some seats also are available for attending the event in person in San Diego. “Here you’ll have the opportunity to connect and engage with others…

Defects in cholesterol metabolism may account for some of the neurological damage that occurs in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other diseases marked by problems with the protein TDP-43, a study reported. As cholesterol  is crucial to nerve cells, these results suggest that restoring its metabolism may be a…

It’s been a decade since the first UMass ALS Cellucci Fund team first participated in the Boston Marathon to raise funds to support University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) researchers in their quest to find better treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). So, this year is significant. The…

Help has come and gone over the past decade since my husband, Todd, has had ALS. When it became too difficult to travel four hours away to an ALS clinic, Todd went to a local neurologist who managed his care. After a couple years, his neurologist left the area, and…

Seelos Therapeutics has announced plans to start patient dosing in a pivotal Phase 2b/3 trial testing its experimental therapy SLS-005 (trehalose), designed to prevent protein clumping in cells, in adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by the close of September. The study is part of the HEALEY ALS Platform…

Rare mutations in the TP73 gene, which is involved in the regulation of a cell’s life cycle, may put a person at greater risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a genetic analysis of nearly 2,900 sporadic ALS patients. Such mutations were found to affect the maturation and survival of…

Registration is now open for the 2021 Rare Diseases and Orphan Products Breakthrough Summit, which will be held virtually Oct. 18–19. The event, also known as the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) Summit, brings the rare disease community together to network and discuss developments in treatments and research…

Diminished activity in the C9orf72 gene that is linked with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) affected the neuromuscular junction — where nerve and muscle cells connect — in a zebrafish model, establishing the model as a disease research tool and the gene’s role in ALS symptoms. Zebrafish in this C9orf72 loss-of-function model…