In Canada, a grand total of $16.2 million was raised through the challenge.
Advertisement
Having raised almost a quarter of a billion dollars in worldwide donations through the now-famous Ice Bucket Challenge, the ALS Association announced that one of the scientific efforts it funds has achieved a “significant gene discovery”.
Thanks to the social media phenomenon, which raised more than $100 million in contributions, researchers were able to identify a gene that seems to be highly common among sufferers of ALS. Those who didn’t want to participate in the challenge were encouraged to donate money instead toward research on the neurodegenerative disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The discovery will allow scientists to potentially target the gene and use it for therapy development.
Project MinE, a collaboration between Dr. John Landers at UMass in Worcester and Dr. Jan Veldink from UMass’ center in the Netherlands, discovered the gene after an worldwide effort to sequent the genomes of at least 15,000 people with ALS.
The research team at UMass Medical School in Worcester that was funded by the unprecedented donations from the challenge recently identified the gene NEK1 that causes myotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
A social media sensation created to fund research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has proven even more relevant today than at its viral peak.
Advertisement
The collaborative effort involved more than 80 researchers from 11 countries. Out of these cases at least 90% of them occur without any previous family history of the disease and around 10% of them are genetic in nature. “The sophisticated gene analysis that led to this finding was only possible because of the large number of ALS samples available”.
