Six months after a morning assembly inspired them to start working on the project, four eighth-graders at John Burroughs School were honored at an assembly Tuesday for their work on finding a treatment for Lou Gehrig's disease.

The four students are regional semifinalists in the middle school category of Toshiba's ExploraVision science competition. The idea of the program is to create a technology that could be used 20 years from now. Twenty-four teams, including one from Ladue High School, were honored nationally for their projects.

The team from Burroughs was motivated by 1985 Burroughs graduate Jack Orchard, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease. Orchard spoke in late September to students at his alma mater about the degenerative disease, encouraging them to volunteer for victims of ALS and support scientific research of the disease.

"I've never seen kids respond to a speaker the way they responded to him," Burroughs administrator Ellen Bremner said.

About 50 students at the school now participate in the Extra Hands program to help people suffering from ALS, and eighth-graders Lucas Bruton, Michael Hill, Anna Fung and Joel Shuman took the scientific research into their own hands.

They proposed a drug therapy to help improve the mobility of ALS patients. The disease causes nerve cells to break down, causing patients to lose control over their muscles.

"We did lots and lots and lots of research," Joel said. "We had about 80 ideas at first. We started with buckyballs" - water-soluble carbon molecules.

"Then we moved on to antibodies," Anna said.

Buckyballs are molecules shaped like geodesic domes and named for architect R. Buckminster Fuller, the designer of such domes. The students proposed attaching antibodies to the buckyballs and delivering this medicine through a pump into the spinal fluid.

The team, "coached" by science teacher Mary Hill, named this treatment SMAGALS - Stop Myelin-Associated Glycoprotein for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

While researching the project, the students read a study about ALS that Dr. Laura Dugan headed up several years ago at Washington University. Hill contacted the professor of neurobiology, and Dugan became the group's community mentor.

"The kids were thinking about novel things you wouldn't necessarily try right now, but they look promising in the future," Dugan said. "I thought this was a very sophisticated approach. I was incredibly impressed, especially since it was only four kids."

Orchard and his wife, Eve Tetzlaff, also were impressed.

"We read the paper and we were like, 'That might work!'" Tetzlaff told the team before the ceremony Tuesday.

The next step in the competition is for the team to create a Web site using the new laptop they won for being semifinalists. That means a lot of work over spring break, but the team is used to a lot of after-hours work.

"It's a labor of love," Joel said.