Time Magazine Recognizes
ALS Stem Cell Research as
No. 1 Medical Breakthrough in 2008

Time magazine has named the creation of motor neurons using ordinary skins cells from people with ALS as the No. 1 medical breakthrough in 2008. The research was reported last summer by The ALS Association.

“Researchers at Harvard and Columbia reported a milestone experiment in July, using a new method — one that doesn't require embryos at all — to generate the first motor neurons from stem cells in two elderly women with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS,” wrote Alice Park in the magazines Top 10 Everything of 2008 issue published in December.

“The technique, developed by Kyoto University scientist Shinya Yamanaka in 2006, involves reprogramming a patient's ordinary skin cells to behave like stem cells, then coaxing them into the desired tissue-specific cells,” continued Park. “Using the motor neurons created from ALS patients, scientists can now study the progress of the disease as the affected cells develop, degenerate and die in a dish — something researchers could never do before for such slow-moving conditions. Once scientists understand the development of ALS, they may be able to create more effective treatments, or perhaps even a cure.”