Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Breaking the Wall of ALS

Gregory Petsko

Life Sciences

The nominating institution Harvard Medical School on the project:

If there is a worse disease than ALS, you should hope never to see it. Relentlessly progressive and 100% fatal, it has no treatment. By means of a clever genetic screen, the nominee and his colleagues identified a gene that, when modestly overexpressed, is able to rescue nerve cell models of ALS. In the most severe animal models, it can also halt disease progression. This novel gene therapy has identified a new pathway for treating ALS, and is scheduled to begin human clinical trials sometime in 2021.

 

Tags: Bio-Tech, Med-Tech, Resilience, Trust in science, Human Health

Gregory Petsko

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Gregory Petsko is professor of neurology at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His research focuses on the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

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