How Skin Cells Can Help Treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

Why did I choose ALS?

Well, that’s a simple question. I chose ALS because my great-grandmother lived with this terrible disease for three years. My family and I had to watch her suffer, and that is what inspired me to research and find an effective treatment for it. Since her diagnosis, I was always really curious about ALS, so I chose to help figure out a way to treat it.

ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lou Gehrig was a professional baseball player who was diagnosed with the disease and was forced to retire because of its devastating effects.

What exactly is Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Do you remember the ice bucket challenge a few years ago? That challenge was started to raise awareness for ALS and to encourage people to donate to the cause. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Also known as ALS as well as Lou Gehrig’s disease is a disease that progressively paralyzes people because their brain is no longer able to communicate with the muscles of the body, specifically to your motor neurons that control your muscles which people are typically able to move at will. Over time, as the muscles of the body break down, someone living with ALS will lose the ability to walk, talk, eat, swallow, and eventually breathe.

What Does ALS Affect?

ALS affects your motor neurons by slowly killing them or gradually hurting them. Your motor neurons control all of your muscle movements so if your motor neurons die then you won’t be able to control your muscles. And if you can’t control your muscles you can’t move those certain body parts that are affected.

How Might Skin Cells Help treat ALS?

Skin cells can be genetically modified to turn into motor neurons. They are capable of doing this by exposing skin cells to certain molecular signals that are typically found at high levels in the human brain. Scientists focused on exposing the molecular signals specifically to certain genes, two different types of microRNAs that are involved in repurposing the genetic instructions of the cell.

After reading that I thought, “if skin cells can be turned into motor neurons cant we use those motor neurons to help treat ALS?” As mentioned, ALS affects your motor neurons so if we can genetically modify skin cells into motor neurons we can replace the non-functioning or dead motor neurons with these ones. By replacing them, we can help the patient temporarily regain control of their muscles. And along with regaining control of your muscles, you can regain control of your body.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a fatal disease and so many people suffer from it. Estimates suggest that ALS is responsible for as many as five of every 100,000 deaths in people aged 20 or older. I believe that better treatments are possible, especially with emerging technologies and advancements in Science

I hope that after reading this article you learned a little bit about what it is and how we can treat it. Do you know anyone with ALS?