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Millions of Americans took the challenge. They doused themselves with ice water and sent a check to the
ALS Association to help fund the fight against the almost always deadly disease. Now, there is hope for a treatment, coming out of Isreal.
The treatment is called NurOwn, and it was developed by the Isreali biotechnology company BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics. The treatment harvests a patient’s stem cells from their bone marrow, treats the cells with chemicals until they grow new neurons, then injects them into that patient’s spinal fluid. Researchers hoped NurOwn would slow the progression of ALS, and it appears to have done that in several Isreali patients.
That success in Isreal has led to Phase II clinical trials at three locations in the United States. Those in the American ALS community — like Tanner Hockensmith, with the Texas Chapter of the ALS Association — are watching these trials closely.
“It’s an exciting, new, scientific breakthrough that we haven’t really seen, and there have been a lot of advances about how to come up with stem cells, looking past embryonic stem cells, going to adult stem cells and regrowing them for trials and treatments, so there are still a lot of exciting things happening.”
Hockensmith says any time there are American trials of an ALS treatment, it’s another shot on goal for those struggling against the disease, and he says, “The more shots we can get on goal, as far as attempts at trials like this, is the best, in the long run, for ALS patients.”
Perhaps as exciting as NurOwn’s potential as a treatment for ALS patients is its potential for treating many other diseases. Hockensmith says, “If this gets traction, it isn’t just good news for ALS patients. There are things in this that could possibly help other neurologic diseases, as well, so it’s a win-win for everybody when things like this get approved.”
So NurOwn may offer hope to people with diseases like Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis.
The U.S. trials of NurOwn start this fall, and will end in 2016.