Friday, July 29, 2016

Ice water gave the breakthrough in ALS research – Västerbotten Courier

R Many poured ice water over him and donated money for ALS research. Now stunt Ice Bucket Challenge has made a great breakthrough in Umeå.

– We have been able to do much more for this money. The fact that we found a new gene that causes the disease is a really great discovery, said Peter Andersen, a professor of neurology at Umeå University.

It was two years ago as a long line of celebrities and ordinary people poured a bucket of iced water over himself in front of the camera. At the same time it gave a gift to ALS research. In Sweden attended 31,000 people with gifts that meant that three million went to Peter Andersen and his European colleagues in the project Mine. The project is a collaboration comparing patient samples between laboratories in the world and aims to find new genes that may be important for the development of severe disease. Overall, the project has thus been 5.6 million to spend.

– But we need more money. This is an insanely expensive project, says Andersen.

In a newly published article in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Genetics presented this week researchers new breakthroughs. They have found a new gene, C21orf2, which is strongly associated with the disease.

– Neil Armstrong could not fly to the moon on their own and this is the same. The whole essence of Project Mine is that we make a joint cannon effort and find only demonstrates that we can work together, and that the whole concept works, says Peter Andersen.

Umeå University has long been a world leader in research on ALS and it still is. Today there are samples from more than 11,000 ALS patients from around the world right in Umeå. There is, for example, the largest sample bank for patients from countries such as Switzerland and Denmark. Someone suffering from hubris, however, not of, despite the central role that the university plays in the fight against the cruel disease.

– No, we are many who are working on this, everything is based on cooperation. Mine is that the EU at the graduate level, says Peter Andersen.

About ten percent of those who get ALS have an inherited variation while it has been seen that 90 percent suffer spontaneously, without parents or other relatives had the disease. Now it is believed that it may not be that ill spontaneously but it depends on many weak disease genes that interact. At inherited ALS is single but strong predisposition to diseases that are the cause.

– The cause of spontaneous ALS can be a combination effect of many weak disease predisposition. Now the hunt on to find them, says Peter Andersen.

The research has compared blood samples from 12,500 ALS patients with blood samples from 24,000 healthy patients.

Thomas Eriksson

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