ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Progress
“I am very grateful for this fellowship. It comes during a critical time when I am focused on generating data and applying for funding to try to become established as an investigator. This support will allow me to remain focused on ALS and ongoing work on C9orf72 therapy development. It has been an amazing source of motivation and encouragement as I near the end of my training.”
Lindsay Hayes, M.D., Ph.D., Recipient of the Clinician-Scientist Development Award in ALS Research
The ALS Association is grateful for generous donors who are committed to improving the care of people living with ALS and in driving research forward to find a treatment and a cure for this disease.
Here are some first-hand testimonials from investigators all over the globe who have benefited from ALS Association funding:
“With support from The ALS Association, we have already identified a new gene that we hope will lead to promising therapeutics in the future.”
- Bernard Muller, Co-Founder, Project MinE
“The ALS Association’s support has been transformative for my work. With Ice Bucket Challenge donations, The ALS Association was able to double down on its investment in antisense technology that targets C9orf72, the most common genetic cause of ALS, which will likely enter clinical trials in early 2017.”
- Don Cleveland, Ph.D., University of San Diego, Member of the Neuro Collaborative
“In my work at the Duke University ALS Clinic, I’ve been systematically reviewing alternative and off-label treatments, which we hope will help people living with the disease make more informed decisions about them. Thanks to funding from The ALS Association and ALS Ice Bucket Challenge donations, we’re now able to complete twice as many reviews each year.”
- Rick Bedlack, M.D., Duke ALS Clinic, Founder of ALSUntangled
“Funding through the ALS Association’s Certified Treatment Center of Excellence program has enabled us to think creatively and expand our clinical research program. Currently, we are engaging engineers at Carnegie Melon University to develop prostheses for people living with ALS, which will significantly increase quality of life.”
- Sandeep Rana, M.D., Alleghany Neurological Associates, Pittsburgh, Penn.
“Thanks to supporters of The ALS Association, our Brain Computer Interface (BCI) study will result in a more effective, streamlined device that improves the communication abilities of a person living with ALS. It is revolutionary technology in that there is a direct connection between the brain and the computer.”
- Andrew Geronimo, Ph.D., Penn State Hershey ALS Clinic and Medical Center, Co-investigator of TREAT ALS™ Clinical Management Award
“I was extremely honored to receive a fellowship grant from The ALS Association to further my work in studying ALS because I know that so many people apply. It has already helped advance my work on tuning the levels of the C9orf72 gene, the most common genetic mutation in ALS.”
- Antonia Dominguez, Ph.D., Stanford University, Recipient of The Association’s Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship
“I want to give a big thank you to ALS Association donors for their support and trust. Without their generous contribution, I would not be where I am now. I am extremely grateful for not only the fellowship I received in 2010 but also my recent grant, which has kept me focused on how upper motor neurons die in ALS and how to intervene to prevent their death.”
- Javier Jara, Ph.D., Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Recipient of The Association’s Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship and The Association’s Investigator-Initiated Starter Award.
“ALS Association support helps us on so many levels. It excites us, invigorates us and validates us. But at same time, there is a strong sense of responsibility because this is money from someone that was most likely touched by this devastating disease. That level of trust means a lot and heightens our work.”
- James Connor, Ph.D., Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Recipient of TREAT ALS™ Investigator-Initiated Award
“Funding from The ALS Association has allowed us to generate a set of valuable ALS stem cell lines and develop robust protocols for making motor neurons from them. As there are the cells that die in ALS they should help us understand the underlying mechanisms of disease.”
- Clive Svendsen, Ph.D., Cedar-Sinai Medical Center, Member of the Neuro Collaborative
“The support for the Neuro Collaborative from The ALS Association has allowed us to approach therapeutics development for ALS with an urgency and at a scale that we could never do before. It enables us to greatly accelerate the work, make unexpected and promising new discoveries. In less than a year, we already formed our first partnership with a drug company entirely dedicated to ALS.”
- Steve Finkbeiner, M.D., Ph.D., Gladstone Institutes, Member of the Neuro Collaborative
“What The ALS Association does enables research to happen and enables the first steps in drug discovery because this area is risky, underfunded and essential to generate the preliminary data required leading up to FDA approval. Funding from The Association largely enables those types of feasibility studies, and so on behalf of Aquinnah and as an academic, I want to thank The ALS Association for all you are doing.”
- Benjamin Wolozin, Ph.D., Boston University School of Medicine, Recipient of TREAT ALS™ Drug Development Contract
former Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellow and Recipient of the Investigator-Initiated Starter Grant
