May is ALS Awareness Month, a time to reflect on the role of regenerative medicine research in advancing understanding and treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This neurodegenerative disorder causes nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to die, blocking signals to the muscles. That results in paralysis that robs a person of the ability to walk, talk and breathe. Because there is no cure, ALS eventually leads to respiratory weakness and death.
“There’s a huge urgency to find new therapies that help patients with ALS because currently what we have is not sufficient. Patients are eagerly awaiting answers that address their unmet needs. We need to quickly and safely deliver new, validated treatments to those who are afflicted. That motivates our team to get out of bed every morning and work on it as hard as we can,” says Nathan Staff, M.D., Ph.D., a neurologist, regenerative medicine expert and principal investigator on ALS stem cell research at Mayo Clinic.
New options are needed, because the drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat ALS are not effective enough at slowing the course of the disease.
