Ride For Life

The ALS Association issued the following statement on the Food and Drug Administration's recommendations to reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). more...

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) has introduced legislation in the Senate that would amend the Social Security Act (SSA) to ensure that individuals suffering from certain terminal diseases are entitled to receive social security disability benefits. Under current law, an individual who contracts a covered terminal illness, and who has not been part of the workforce for a period of time, may not qualify for social security disability benefits they would otherwise be entitled to.more...

Avicena Group, Inc., a developer of novel pharmaceutical and therapeutic products, announced today that a Phase II clinical trial of two combination therapies incorporating ALS-08, one of its proprietary drug candidates for the treatment of ALS has been initiated.more...

Harvard Business School student Avichai “Avi” Kremer has a tendency to get right to the point. He doesn’t have long to live and he doesn’t want to waste a minute of his time. Kremer wants money to fight the disease that is killing him and thousands of others.more...

Raising more than $200,000 for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig's disease, wasn't enough for Northport High School students. This summer, four students are heading into ALS laboratories across the country in an attempt to tackle the fatal motor neuron disease head-on.more...

Compared to years past, people who come down with Lou Gehrig disease nowadays seem to have slower disease progression and to live long. Nonetheless, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, as the disease is known formally, is still always fatal, ultimately.more...

Packard scientist Don Cleveland and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, reported details this week of a promising therapy-aimed study in ALS animal models that essentially shuts off action of offending genes.more...

Experiments in rats suggest it is possible to slow down amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using an antisense approach to therapy.more...

Two young investigators are joining the field of ALS research under The ALS Association’s innovative program funded by The Milton Safenowitz Post-Doctoral Fellowship for ALS Research. This grant program recognizes and recruits gifted young scientists to the study of ALS.more...

San Diego researchers have demonstrated in animals a new approach toward treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, suggesting that the deadly nervous system disease may someday be treated as a chronic but manageable illness.more...

One cold December afternoon in 2004, Scott and Tammy Brown’s daughter Lauren came home from school worried, confused and full of questions. “Some of our friends had found out, and their daughter is one of Lauren’s good friends. So, the little girl was on the bus and told Lauren, ‘Your mom is dying.’” Tammy, 34, says, nervously shifting in her wheelchair and glancing at her husband. “It wasn’t something we were prepared to tell yet. They (Lauren and son Logan) know, but it just happened.” Of course, Lauren, then 8, wanted answers that day and the Browns responded in turn – “Sissy, your mother has ALS and that is why she’s had trouble walking, it’s not anyone’s fault, everything is going to be all right.” But what Lauren didn’t ask (and what the Browns themselves had yet to realize) was how much the family would spend on Tammy’s medical care during the next two years. The cost of sick today, they would learn, is astronomical.more...

The Medical University of South Carolina's new ALS clinic, which officially launches today, is the first of its kind in the state, and one of about 25 across the nation. The clinic will offer one-stop shopping to patients with the disease - visits with neurologists, physical and occupational therapists, speech and swallowing specialists and dietary experts, all during one daylong visit each month.more...

An ambitious five-year project will attempt to make eye-tracking technologies more affordable for people with disabilities and extend the potential use of the devices to enable users to live more independently. more...

Traveling 40 feet doesn't mean much to most of us, but to Ray Jeffries, 55, it means the world. Jeffries suffers from ALS. The disease affects his legs and arms and requires that he use a wheelchair for mobility. The only problem is that Jeffries always needs assistance when he wants to leave his mobile home at the Rainier Vista Mobile Home Park in Olympia.more...

The Dysphagia Cookbook: Great Tasting and Nutritious Recipes for People with Swallowing Difficulties is filled with delicious recipes that are not only easy to swallow but are so good they can also be enjoyed by family and friends.more...

Two boys whose lives have been changed forever by their dad's ALS are featured on a calendar. more...

Artists use their work to communicate their vision of the world, but Gary Wickman's paintings are about the last way he has to communicate at all. Wickman was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease), an incurable progressive neurodegenerative disease, three years ago. He is approaching its final stage. "We were watching a PBS auction that included an oil-painting set. He turned and said, 'I think I could still do that,' " said Jill Wickman, Gary's wife. In the past year, painting up to five hours at a stretch, Gary has produced dozens of small canvases.more...

Kevin Hulings is chalking up a 15th year of his own war against ALS. The disease has wasted his muscles, wiped out his voice and immobilized his body. Yet, his mind races at the speed of sound, and unmistakable glints of humor light up his eyes. When his voice succumbed to the disease, Hulings turned to technology. Now, he once again ‘‘talks’’ and argues issues.more...

It started out as a slight shaking of the legs. Slowly, though, it got worse and more noticeable. Doctors could not place it, and after a year of searching for cures, Edison-born Patrick O'Brien finally got the diagnosis. It was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. At 30, O'Brien was given two to five years to live. Now, a year after the diagnosis, the filmmaker from New Jersey is taking his story to the streets. more...

In August 2004, Scott Stafne and his wife, Kirsten, learned they were expecting their first child. Three weeks later, Scott was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 32. Their daughter Eva was born in April 2005. more...

Keith LeClair, East Carolina University's former baseball coach who inspired many while facing the crippling effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig's disease, died Monday. He was 40.more...

When an ALS patient in the Chesapeake Support Group was having an especially bad day, invariably the phone would ring or an e-mail would pop onto the person's computer. It would be from Bob Echols. "He worried more about others than he did himself," said Cathy Easter, Virginia regional director of the ALS Association's DC/MD/VA chapter. Echols died ofALS May 6 at age 54, after uplifting hundreds of friends and strangers. more...

Robert T. Brain, a founder of the small local credit union that became the hugely successful Wescom, died Tuesday at his Pasadena home with his family present after a long battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 75.more...

Robert McAlvey's friends say that he was a strong man. Not just physically strong, though he was a state champion wrestler in his youth, but strong in his convictions, strong in the way he cared for those around him and strong in the face of ALS, the disease that took his life Monday. more...

A full-honors police funeral will be held for a Canadian police constable who died from ALS, which doctors say was triggered 4 1/2 years ago during a fight while making an arrest.more...

After more than two years of intensive ethical and scientific review, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Harvard and Children's Hospital Boston have been cleared to begin experiments using Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) to create disease-specific stem cell lines in an effort to develop treatments for a wide range of now-incurable conditions afflicting tens of millions of people. more...

Project A.L.S. today opens the first privately-funded lab to focus exclusively on the study of stem cells to treat ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and related motor neuron diseases, announced Valerie Estess, Research Director for Project A.L.S.more...

Disgraced cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk has been indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement and breach of a bioethics law in the stem cell fabrication scandal, the prosecution announced yesterday.more...

Stem cells in the brain have enabled many lab discoveries and soon will be tested in children with a rare disease, but it could be years or decades before possible treatments for brain disorders are available, experts say.more...

Canadian researchers have used stem cells to repair spinal cord damage in laboratory rats, restoring significant mobility in the animals and bringing the search for a human therapy another step closer.more...