Did you see the article in today's paper? On the TV news? On the Internet?
It should have been, as far as I'm concerned, a banner headline story on page 1, the Libya news notwithstanding. It ranks right up there as one of the most exciting news stories I have ever read.
"Researchers Say They've Found Common Cause of All Types of ALS," says the headline in HealthDay News. "Northwest Study Unveils Clues to Cause of ALS," says the Chicago Tribune. "Mutations in UBQLN2 cause dominant X-linked juvenile and adult-onset ALS and ALS/dementia," reads the headline, with far more technical detail but way less zing, in Nature, the International Journal of Science.
Any news about ALS research is cause for attention. Any news about positive developments is cause for celebration – and this news is confetti, fireworks, candles-on-the-cake celebration material, indeed. This news could change the whole game plan for ALS study. It could – and I can barely bring myself to write this – lead to a cure.
A research team at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, led by pioneering ALS researcher Dr. Teepu Siddique, has discovered a single biological process that links all forms of ALS: a flawed protein recycling system in brain and spinal cord nerves. Without efficient recycling of the protein building blocks, neurons become severely damaged because they can't repair or maintain themselves. This causes the nervous system to slowly lose its ability to carry signals to voluntary muscles, depriving the ALS patient of the ability to move, talk, swallow and breathe.
"This is the first time we could connect it (ALS) to a clear-cut biomedical mechanism," Dr. Siddique said in a press release. "It has really made the direction we have to take very clear and sharp. We can now test for drugs that would regulate this protein pathway or optimize it, so it functions as it should in a normal state."
In a normal state – doesn't that sound wonderful? Wouldn't it be awesome, in the true sense of the word, if that were achievable? Doesn't it shine a real light of hope on this dreadful, deadly disease?
For the first time, researchers understand what happens at the cellular level to cause ALS. When you discover what goes wrong, says a researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, only then can you design drugs to make it right.
So start designing. Immediately. Without delay. Right now.
Please…
