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ALS United Mid-Atlantic Funds Major Research Project at Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center

Since the mid-1990s, ALS United Mid-Atlantic has proudly supported the ALS care and research programs led by Dr. Zachary Simmons at Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center. The nationally recognized team of experts at Penn State Health continue to advance innovative studies to better understand the science behind ALS, improve effective care programs, and get closer to a cure.

In 2024, ALS United Mid-Atlantic funded the latest promising ALS research study from Penn State Health. “The work that Penn State Health is doing to understand the effects of environmental toxins linked to ALS will be crucial to our greater understanding of ALS,” said Jeff Cline, Executive Director of ALS United Mid-Atlantic.

Evaluating the effects of environmental toxins linked to ALS on neuronal homeostasis significance ALS/FTD is a progressive neurodegenerative spectrum disorder that affects motor neurons (MNs) in ALS and the frontal cortex in FTD. Existing therapies are palliative at best therefore there is a great need to understand the underlying causes of disease in order to develop effective prevention and therapeutic strategies. Although ALS and FTD have a well-defined genetic component, >70% of ALS and a large fraction of FTD cases have unknown etiology 1. Several clinical studies have identified environmental factors (i.e., the ALS exposome) and gene-environment interactions as critical contributors to disease onset and progression, yet these remain poorly understood. Recently, the NINDS and the ALS community of researchers, clinicians, patients and patient advocacy groups have identified five overarching priorities for the ALS community. Notably, the first priority is to better understand the biological underpinnings of ALS including the contribution of environmental factors. While some patients have a genetic variation that is associated with the disease, the vast majority of ALS patients don’t have any known mutations or other clear risk factors. Therefore, a major priority is to better understand the causes of disease in these cases. Part of this goal is to also better understand how biological and environmental factors contribute to variability in clinical features among ALS patients.

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