ALS TDI’s 2022 Mid-Year Highlights
Posted: August 17, 2022 in Other News
ALS TDI
CAMBRIDGE, MA – Ending ALS will require many treatments to meet the needs of every individual with this disease. As the Drug Discovery Engine for ALS, ALS TDI is solely focused on inventing and discovering treatments until everyone with ALS has access to effective therapies.
ALS TDI is proud of the progress that it has made thus far in 2022 and looks forward to continuing to share detailed updates at the 2022 ALS TDI Summit on October 14th.
Here are some of our research highlights so far in 2022.
- In March ALS TDI announced that we were awarded a $281,000 grant from the United States Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Mandated Research Program for ALS (ALSRP). The grant will support a new study designed by ALS TDI to identify biomarkers for ALS. Leveraging data from ALS TDI’s Precision Medicine Program (PMP) and cutting-edge technologies for identifying potential protein biomarkers, this study represents what may be an unprecedented opportunity in the pursuit of ALS biomarkers. Learn more about the study here.
- In April, ALS TDI and our collaborators at Google published a paper titled A Machine-Learning Based Objective Measure for ALS Disease Severity. In the paper, ALS TDI and Google authors describe how they used PMP data and machine learning to develop digital biomarkers of ALS – new tools that can objectively measure ALS symptom severity and progression over time. These powerful ML tools could be a step toward allowing clinical investigators to more accurately measure changes in symptom progression and learn how they relate to experimental ALS treatments and interventions in clinical trials. You can learn more about these tools here.
- On May 31, Eledon Pharmaceuticals announced that tegoprubart (formerly known as AT-1501) – a drug invented at ALS TDI – had successfully completed a phase 2a trial. In a recent letter to the community, ALS TDI’s CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, Fernando Vieira M.D. stated that, “This is an important milestone for ALS TDI, and for the ALS community. It is evidence of the progress that we are making in research, and proof that a community-funded drug discovery lab can deliver effective treatments for clinical testing.” Read the letter from our CEO here.
- While tegoprubart has been advancing, our scientists have continued to work urgently to discover and invent new treatments. We currently have two promising programs that are poised to advance toward clinical trial, and we continue to build on this – with a goal of advancing a new drug to trial every two years. You can donate to support our ALS drug discovery here.
Everything that we accomplish is fueled by our ALS community, and the support that we receive has a direct impact on our ALS drug discovery.
Thank you for helping to make this research possible!
To attend our 2022 ALS TDI Summit and learn more about our current ALS research, register here.
