Researchers from The Ludwig Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered that when motor neurons damaged by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, inappropriately send the wrong
Researchers from The Ludwig Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered that when motor neurons damaged by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, inappropriately send the wrong signal, immune cells react by killing the messenger. Their surprising finding provides new direction for therapies to treat ALS.
The study, conducted in the laboratory of Don Cleveland, Ph.D., UCSD Professor of Medicine, Neurosciences and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, will be published online April 27 in advance of publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Working in mouse models with an inheritable form of ALS, the researchers found that motor neurons – whose normal role is to trigger muscles to contract – were 