（English）Crowdfunding campaign for ALS research

Overview of this Crowdfunding:
The development of treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has been accelerating since the development of iPSC-based Drug Discovery.

 

We are challenging crowdfunding for the further understanding and development of treatments for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.

 

 

Your donation through this crowdfunding campaign will be used for research to elucidate the fundamental pathology of ALS and other neurological intractable diseases and to develop new treatment methods.
 
We will continue to deepen our understanding of ALS in general and develop new treatments for more types of ALS. We appreciate your contributions to help us strengthen our basic research with a view to clinical application.

How to support by credit card: English Guide

 

Based on iPSCs derived from familial ALS patients, we explored for therapeutic drugs that improve ALS phenotypes from FDA-approved existing drugs.

 

As a result, we identified ropinirole hydrochloride (already approved as an anti-Parkinson's disease drug) as a new ALS drug candidate (Fujimori et al., Nat Med, 2018, Okano et al, Trends Pharmacol Sci, 2020).

 

Soon after, a clinical trial of ropinirole hydrochloride in 20 patients with sporadic ALS (ROPALS trial) (Morimoto et al, Regen Ther, 2019, Okano and Morimoto, Cell Stem Cell, 2022) suggested that it may be a safe and effective treatment for patients with ALS (Morimoto et al. 2023 in press).

 

Our research aims to develop innovative treatments for various types of ALS by applying research techniques already established at Department of Physiology, Keio University School of Medicine.

 

Furthermore, by conducting reverse translational research (rTR) using clinical information and biological samples obtained from many patients in the ROPALS trial, as well as samples from public biological sample banks, we will develop biomarkers related to the pathology and diagnosis of ALS and surrogate markers for determining the efficacy of clinical trials