Press Releases
Project A.L.S.™ and Packard Center Take Aim At ALS With
$15 Million Program
January 29 2010
Leading Researchers Unite for P2 ALS, a 3-Year Mission to Understand and Treat the Neurodegenerative Disease
Project A.L.S.™ (New York, NY) and the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) announced that they will partner on P2 ALS, a $15 million initiative designed to advance ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) research exponentially over the next three years.
Project A.L.S.™ and the Packard Center, non-profit leaders in forging productive collaborations among research scientists, will focus jointly on identifying the underlying causes of and the first effective treatments for ALS, a uniformly fatal neurodegenerative disease that is closely related to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Co-scientific directors of P2 ALS are Robert H. Brown, Jr., M.D., D.Phil. (University of Massachusetts), Thomas M. Jessell, Ph.D. (HHMI/Columbia University), and Jeffrey Rothstein, M.D., Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University).
P2ALS is distinctive in that it unites key world leaders in the three disciplines that have recently transformed the landscape of ALS science: Genetics, Stem Cell Reprogramming, and Glial-Neuron Signaling. Through P2ALS, targeted research in these three areas will be performed in an interactive, collaborative, and transparent manner. As such, the implications of discoveries in one area will be rapidly transmitted and tested in complementary areas, by multiple laboratories. New observations and ideas can and will be validated or refuted with unprecedented speed.
View the Project A.L.S.™ press release
NEW TOOL USED TO IDENTIFY ALS DRUGS
August 31, 2009
Project A.L.S.™ scientists are using a new tool to identify the causes of ALS and drugs that may slow it down--patient skin. In a recent breakthrough championed by Project A.L.S.™ researchers at Harvard, Columbia, and the Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research, scientists took tiny skin biopsies from ALS patients, converted the patient skin biopsies into embryonic-like stem cells, and, finally, directed the embryonic-like stem cells to become motor neurons, the very cells that die in ALS. The resulting motor neurons featured patient DNA and gave scientists a new window into the causes of and potential treatments for the disease.
Led by Kevin Eggan (Harvard Stem Cell Institute) and Chris Henderson (Columbia University), the Project A.L.S.™ team at the Jenifer Estess Laboratory has taken the work to the next level. This summer, the team generated millions of patient-specific motor neurons from patients with the both the sporadic and familial forms of ALS. The neurons, as well as the stem cells from which they derive, are being thoroughly characterized.
The lab has also employed novel techniques to create disease models from the cells. “We call it ‘ALS in a dish,’” says Valerie Estess, director of research for Project A.L.S.™ “Now Project A.L.S.™ scientists can make a facsimile of ALS in a petrie dish. Doctors simply cannot cut into a living ALS patient and see his or her motor neurons at work. The new system gives us a first look at why a patient’s motor neurons are targeted for destruction in ALS. These are exiting days.”
The Project A.L.S.™ team has begun to test potentially therapeutic compounds and combinations of compounds against the new ALS model. Says Estess, “Up until now, we have screened drugs in ALS mice, which has been unproductive. Drugs that helped mice failed in humans. Patient-derived stem cells will allow us to model ALS more accurately. We hope that new drugs emerge from early screens as contenders.”
For more information on progress in the Project A.L.S.™/Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research, call 212-420-7382.
View the Project A.L.S.™ press release
Read paper in Science
TIME MAGAZINE NAMES Project A.L.S.™ MILESTONE #1 MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH OF 2008
December 16, 2008
Time magazine has named a Project A.L.S.™ initiative its #1 medical breakthrough of the year. “First Neurons Created from ALS Patients” tops Time’s list of scientific and medical advances in 2008.
As originally reported in the July 31 online issue of the journal Science, a Project A.L.S.™-funded collaboration led by Kevin Eggan, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and Christopher Henderson, of Columbia University, and catalyzed by the Project A.L.S.™/Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research, demonstrates that pluripotent stem (iPS) cells generated from a patient with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) can be directed to differentiate into motor neurons—the very brain cells destroyed by ALS.
View the Project A.L.S.™ press release
View the Time Magazine 2008 New Story
Gene Therapy Prolongs Survival, Slows Disease Progression in ALS Mice
August 7, 2003
View the Project A.L.S.™ press release
Researchers Announce that Stem Cells Can Become Functional Neurons
July 17, 2002
View the Project A.L.S.™ press release
The mission of Project A.L.S.™ is to recruit the world’s best research scientists and clinicians to work together toward an understanding of and the first effective treatments for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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