Mayo Clinic in Florida announced Sept. 24 it received a $22 million grant to further research into a possible treatment for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
The grant is from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and provides funds for a six-month study of an experimental drug to monitor amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Mayo Clinic in Florida in South Jacksonville will receive $12 million of the grant and administer the remaining funds to distribute to its collaborators.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Expanded Access Program status to the study. This allows patients with life-threatening illnesses to have access to as of yet unapproved drugs. This expands the number of potential patients outside the scope of the initial clinical trial.
The drug helps monitor a patient’s ALS progression. It is hoped that a blood test will determine the acceleration or decline of the disease’s progress in patients using the experimental drug.
The blood test measures the change in neurofilament protein levels in an ALS patient. High levels of neurofilament proteins may indicate neuron damage.
“This trial will let patients monitor their own ALS condition, and we hope to confirm that this will be an effective way to evaluate progress in patients with ALS,” Dr. Björn Oskarsson, lead investigator for the project and director of Mayo Clinic’s ALS Center of Excellence, said in a news release.
“This is important because it is difficult to say if ALS disease progression is speeding up or slowing down. Neurofilament light can be seen as sort of a speedometer that can give an indication whether a treatment is working or not.”
The experimental drug and treatment will be made available to about 200 ALS patients throughout the Mayo Clinic hospitals and other institutions.
ALS is a fatal motor neuron disease with no known cure or treatment. Those with ALS often die within three years of being diagnosed.
“It is unfortunate that today we do not yet have highly effective treatments for most forms of ALS,” Oskarsson said.
“We urgently need to find such treatments, and this project could get us one or more steps closer to finding our way there.”
Mayo Clinic opened Oct. 6, 1986, in Jacksonville. The Main Campus is at 4500 San Pablo Road S., north of Butler Boulevard.