November 2, 2006

Research Update — from ALSA’s National Office

Renewed Funding for Project to Track Nerve Cells for ALS Therapies

Roberta Friedman, Ph.D., ALSA Research Department Information Coordinator

The ALS Association announces continued funding from its Association-initiated program that will enable progress toward a stem cell strategy for the disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease). Larry Goldstein, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego, has laid the groundwork for the goal of tracking cell implants and seeing how the introduced cells might affect nearby motor neurons. The approach was prompted by discussions at the stem cell workshop sponsored by The Association in 2005 at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Debate over which are the best type of nervous system cells to implant as a potential ALS therapy had sparked Goldstein’s interest in devising a way to monitor how cells of the nervous system will respond to a cell transplant. Goldstein, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, specializes in the way materials are moved to where they are needed inside nerve cells. He realized that the molecular shuttles that move cellular materials can be marked to see how the neurons will respond to nearby grafted cells.

The Goldstein lab has made progress in ways to tag and monitor cells placed into the spinal cord of mice to see how they survive and form functioning networks with existing cells and to view their contacts to muscle. Injection of fluorescent markers under the particular experimental conditions has shown that the technique can follow injected cells, and that animals can survive the delicate surgery if appropriate technique and anesthesia choice is followed.

Now the experiments can get underway to document how motor neuron fibers respond to cell implants. The surveillance methods developed should allow Goldstein to see which types of stem cell transplants would be most appropriate in the setting of ALS.

For more information, click on the report on The Association sponsored stem cell workshop.