One of these was Project MinE, a large data-driven initiative funded by the ALS Association through ice bucket challenge donations, as well as donations from the organization’s Georgia and NY chapters. The ALS Association says money raised through the challenge helped fund a project that has discovered a gene linked to the disease.
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Brian Frederick, executive vice president for communications and development for the ALS Association, told the New York Times that gene research funded through donations would continue.
ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
“They get progressively weaker and weaker, so they end up being trapped”, Dr. Wymer said. Knowing which genes can cause ALS allows scientists and doctors to target those genes for therapy and treatment.
Seventeen million wasted buckets of ice water later, we have a breakthrough in ALS research.
In the summer of 2014, a new type of video began cropping on social media feeds for charity: buckets of ice water being deliberately dumped on people’s heads. However, genes likely play a direct or indirect role in more than 10 percent of ALS cases, according to the researchers.
The first came past year, when researchers at Johns Hopkins University were able to discover why the protein TDP-43 forms clumps in the brains of people affected by ALS.
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The gene is known as NEK1 and was uncovered while searching through over 1,000 families with a history of ALS. The ALS Association’s investment in the project wouldn’t have been possible without the Ice Bucket Challenge, the association said in a press release.
