US ramps up stem cell research effort

In his University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison lab, Su-Chun Zhang discovered a likely cause of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the deadly neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after turning skin cells from ALS patients into stem cells.

A protein error in cellular structures called neurofilaments, which transport chemicals that allow muscles to move, leads to paralysis in at least some forms of ALS, Zhang found. The company he started, BrainXell, is using a federal grant to screen compounds that might be developed into drugs to fix the error.