Neurological Clinical Research Institute team
May is ALS Awareness Month, intended as a time to raise awareness of and foster research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually these motor neurons die, effecting a patient’s ability to move, eat, speak, and breathe.
While there is currently no cure for ALS, researchers, including a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital, are learning more in the hopes of identifying ways to slow or even one day reverse progression of the disease.
The Neurological Clinical Research Institute (NCRI) based at Mass General is a team of over 60 staff members dedicated to developing, facilitating, and conducting multicenter clinical trials in ALS and other neurological diseases.
Stay tuned for more stories this month featuring NCRI researchers and their exciting investigations!
Mass General ALS research in the news:
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Mass General is one of six sites participating in the first late-stage clinical trial in the United States to determine if harvesting stem cells from ALS patients’ bone marrow and injecting it into their spinal canal fluid will halt or slow the development of the disease. (Boston Globe)
- Nazem Atassi, MD, of the NCRI recently received a grant to study PET imaging to measure inflammation in ALS patients as a potential biomarker. (ALS News Today)
Hear from NCRI Co-Director and Chief of Neurology, Merit Cudkowicz, MD, MSc, in this video:
Where is the web page with all the interviews that were taken during May of the MGH ALS patients ? We were told that they would be posted someplace, but we’ve never been able to find any of them, let alone the one my wife gave to Erica McCarthy on 5/1/18.
Hi Gary. You can check on the MGH Neurology Facebook page for the patient stories from May (https://www.facebook.com/MGHNeurology/)