ALS Finding a Cure® (ALSFAC) has awarded a $400,000 grant to a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a Boston based private entity Nemdx Inc. (Nemdx), and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Trieste, Italy, for their project “Developing a Comprehensive Blood Test for Sporadic and Familial ALS.” Dr. Ghazaleh Sadri-Vakili, Director of NeuroEpigenetics Laboratory at the Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Associate Investigator at the Neurological Clinical Research Institute serves as Co- Principal Investigator.
The project will aim to establish a panel of blood biomarkers as tools to uniquely differentiate familiar and sporadic ALS patients from healthy individuals or patients with other neurodegenerative diseases. To do so, the team will conduct a series of tests to collect and compare blood samples against control groups to assess if any of the proteins in the panel may provide an early indication of disease development or progression.
