My Turn: Battling for an ALS Cure | Newsweek My Turn

Are We Taking the Wrong Approach to Curing Alzheimer’s?
Sharon Begley 7/16/2009 12:00:00 AM
Like virtually every other expert on Alzheimer's disease, Sam Gandy was skeptical when he first heard about a Russian antihistamine that not only stopped the cognitive decline of Alzheimer's but also reversed it, with benefits lasting at least 12 months (compared with the six to nine months of current drugs). "My first reaction was 'This is too good to be true,' " he says. But he quickly became convinced that there was something to what he calls the "remarkable efficacy data," and began studying the drug, called dimebolin, himself. That produced perhaps the biggest surprise yet: in studies unveiled today at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, which is going on in Vienna this week, dimebolin increased the amount of the very molecule that all the conventional wisdom about Alzheimer's holds is responsible for the disease.
Brain Boosters
6/27/2009 12:00:00 AM
Daryl Kipke is showing off his company's latest prototype, a state-of-the-art electronic chip. It's not the sort likely to end up powering your iPod, but it does produce a beat you won't be able to get out of your head—because this device is designed to be surgically implanted deep in your brain, where the chip will deliver electric signals to specific clusters of cells. Kipke's firm, NeuroNexus Technologies in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is developing and testing the device to deliver electric pulses that can relieve some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression. "Deep-brain stimulation has been poorly understood," says Kipke, who is also a University of Michigan neuroscientist. "But with this technology we can improve neuron targeting and tuning."
A Winning Pitch: An Update to Our Nov. 10, 2008, My Turn
Mark Starr 6/27/2009 12:00:00 AM
It's been three years since Michael Goldsmith received what he calls his "death sentence": a diagnosis of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In recent months, Goldsmith has seen the paralyzing muscular disorder, which has no cure, progress rapidly. His speech is impaired, and he's more reliant on a wheelchair.
From Bench To Bedside
Sharon Begley 6/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
NIH has its work cut out for it, for the forces within academic medicine that (inadvertently) conspire to impede research aimed at a clinical payoff show little sign of abating. One reason is the profit motive, which is supposed to induce pharma and biotech to invest in the decades-long process of discovering, developing and testing new compounds. It often does. But when a promising discovery has the profit potential of Pets.com, patients can lose out. A stark example is the work of Donald Stein, now at Emory University, who in the 1960s noticed that female rats recovered from head and brain injuries more quickly and completely than male rats. He hypothesized that the pregnancy hormone progesterone might be the reason. But progesterone is not easily patentable. Nature already owns the patent, as it were, so industry took a pass. "Pharma didn't see a profit potential, so our only hope was to get NIH to fund the large-scale clinical trials," says Stein. Unfortunately, he had little luck getting NIH support for his work (more on that later) until 2001, when he received $2.2 million for early human research, and in October a large trial testing progesterone on thousands of patients with brain injuries will be launched at 17 medical centers. For those of you keeping score at home, that would be 40 years after Stein made his serendipitous discovery.
LETTERS
A Call to Arms in the Epilepsy Fight
4/25/2009 12:00:00 AM
'The Mystery of Epilepsy': Readers hailed our April 20 cover story on epilepsy, a devastating, and often misunderstood, disorder. A teenager confessed to feeling "now more understood and most importantly, more normal." While others related tales of triumph and tragedy, all underscored the need for increased funding and research. As for the stigma factor, one reader admitted to "only recently coming out of the closet." One mom said it best: "My daughter has more spunk and courage than a combat unit. She also happens to have epilepsy."
A Big Break In Lou Gehrig's Disease

ALS strikes 5,000 Americans each year. The disease involves the progressive death of motor neurons, the nerve cells that transmit impulses from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles. As the condition advances, sufferers lose the ability to speak, swallow or breathe. Though a few survive 20 years or more (as the British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has), most die within five years.