MediciNova, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that acquires and develops novel, small-molecule therapeutics for diseases with unmet medical needs, recently announced that data from the ongoing clinical trial of MN-166 (ibudilast) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) will be presented at the 6th Annual California ALS Pac10 and Research Network Meeting in January 2016. MN-166…
A new multidisciplinary clinic, the Jefferson Weinberg ALS Center, has announced it will open its doors on January 8th 2016. The new clinic will merge with the already settled Frances and Joseph Weinberg Unit for ALS Research leading to a new comprehensive clinical and research integrated center that will offer patients a…
Detailed new insights into communication between neurons and how those interactions are affected by damage to synapses (junction points among neurons), leading to neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are revealed in a new study entitled “Hsc70-4 Deforms Membranes to Promote Synaptic Protein Turnover by Endosomal Microautophagy,” published in the journal…
In a recent study published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, researchers found that the same sensory neurons that keep a person from dropping a glass of water are implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and because these  neurons are easier to study in the laboratory than motor neurons, they…
On Nov. 19, ALS Societies across Canada and the ALS Canada Research Program in partnership with Brain Canada announced results from this year’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as well as the new list of grant recipients from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research competitions held in 2015. ALS is a disease that involves a gradual…
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals was recently awarded $600,000 from the ALS Finding a Cure Foundation and the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, in addition to an estimated $1.3 million raised through private investors, to develop its lead drug candidate AMX0035 for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in a clinical trial planned for…
MediciNova, Inc. recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the protocol of a novel clinical trial in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to assess MN-166 (ibudilast) on a biomarker of ALS. The Phase 2a trial, titled “A Single-Center, Open-Label Biomarker Study to…
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…
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…
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.
