This year's event will take place on Monday, April 17, 2023, and the UMass ALS Cellucci Fund team will once again have five runners!
Your organization can provide hope to those affected by ALS with something very rare and very needed: Hope. Your organization can sponsor this year's team in their fundraising efforts.
Using a short, synthetic chain of chemically modified nucleotides engineered in the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School, Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, Jonathan Watts, PhD, and colleagues have shown the ability to suppress mutant forms of the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) gene known as C9ORF72 in a single-patient pilot study. C9ORF72 is the most common cause of familial ALS and familial frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The results, published in Nature Medicine, have the potential to catalyze research into treatments for ALS, FTD and other neurodegenerative diseases.