A groundbreaking discovery by Tel Aviv University researchers may provide hope to people suffering from ALS.
There is currently no cure for ALS, a degenerative disease that gradually paralyzes all the muscles of the body and eventually causes death.
Tel Aviv University researchers, led by Dr. Eran Perlson from the Sackler School of Medicine, discovered that muscle cells in ALS patients excrete toxins that damage nerve cells, causing them to degenerate.
They later discovered a molecule that blocks the effect of the toxins, and could serve as the basis for the development of a treatment for the disease in the future.
In a scan of all the proteins excreted by ALS patients, researchers found elevated levels of a protein known as semaphorin, a toxin know to be active during the development of the nervous system in fetuses. Semaphorin is normally only active in the fetal development state, where it destroys some 50% of unnecessary axons, which connect nerve cells to one another. The toxin can, however, reactivate in a variety of pathological conditions like Parkinson's or ALS, or as a result of trauma, for instance following a stroke or spinal cord injury.
Tel Aviv University researchers found that the ALS muscle cells secrete a large amount of semaphorin when they come in contact with the nerve cell.
"We believe our discovery constitutes a real breakthrough on the path to developing effective drugs to treat ALS," Perlson said, "and later possibly to additional neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, in which different types of nerve cells are destroyed."
