Ride For Life: Nanotechnology may help fight ALS

Scientists normally think big, but researchers specializing in a fatal disease that killed baseball legend Lou Gehrig are accepting the possibility that maybe they should think small.

Small in the scientific sense, that is.

Yesterday, scientists in the field of nanotechnology joined ALS researchers at a meeting to attempt a unified search for treatments.

"Nanotechnology is like classical physics, and medicine is very biological," said Chris Pendergast, a 56-year-old former science teacher in Northport who developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, about 13 years ago. The disease wipes out the body's motor neurons, which makes it impossible for the brain and spinal cord to talk to the muscles. The muscles deteriorate and paralysis ensues. The average time between diagnosis and death is five years.

It was the love of a mother, Jeannette Deutsch Oglesby, that led to the budding relationship between nanoscience and ALS. Oglesby's son, David Deutsch, also a former teacher in the Northport school system, was diagnosed with ALS in 2004. Deutsch is 38 and now spends most of his waking time in a wheelchair. So does Pendergast.

"I think ALS needs new life breathed into it," Deutsch said. "We need to push aggressively to introduce new tools."

Oglesby read a paper on nanoscience published last summer by Ratnesh Lal of the Neuroscience Research Institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Lal was the main speaker at yesterday's scientific symposium at the Oheka Castle in Huntington. A large fundraiser followed. The event was organized by students at Northport High School, with the help of Don Strasser, a chemistry teacher and co-adviser of the school's National Honor Society.

Nanoscience is the ability to manipulate matter at the nano-scale - the size of an atom or two. "Almost all areas of science are benefiting from this technology," said Andrew Maynard, chief scientific adviser for the project on nanotechnology at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Lal told a small crowd of doctors, patients and fellow scientists that nanoscience has promise in ALS on many levels. The technology can help unravel damage to an individual motor neuron and allow scientists to track the progression of the disease - from the motor neuron on the spinal cord to the muscle cells in the foot, for instance.

Dr. Hiroshi Mitsumoto, a leading ALS researcher at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan, said that he envisions a technology that could "pull stem cells to where they need to be, giving the signal to pull axons to the muscle cells" and enable people to move again. Such a treatment could be years off, but melding the two fields offers the possibility, Mitsumoto said.

Pendergast agrees. "It is an age-old idea, using a carrot to get a horse where you want it to go. Nanotechnology offers the carrot."