New research published in the journal Neuron shows promise in opening a potential treatment pathway aimed at slowing the disease process and extending survival in patients with ALS, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease, an insidious neurological condition.
The mouse-model study by University of Florida neurogeneticists Laura Ranum, Ph.D., and Lien Nguyen, Ph.D.; Neurimmune; Biogen; and collaborators at Johns Hopkins University shows that targeting a specific mutant protein in the brain with a human-derived antibody can lower neuroinflammation, slow neurodegeneration and lengthen survival in the most common genetic form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and frontotemporal dementia, or FTD.