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als - motor neuron disease: mechanism and development of new therapies

ALS - Motor Neuron Disease: Mechanism and Development of New Therapies

Jeffrey D. Rothstein speaks about the pathology and mechanisms underlying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, advances in ALS research, and current strategies towards the development of therapies.

My name's Jeff Rothstein. I'm a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. So I'm both a neurologist and a neuroscientist.And on the neurology side of my life I study and work clinically on a LS, which is a neuromuscular disease, atrophic lateral sclerosis. On the laboratory side, I try to understand why a LS occurs in terms of the pathophysiology. Why do motor neurons die?Why do cells not work properly, including cells like astrocytes? And then at the very fundamental side, I work on synaptic biology of astrocytes And glutamate transporters. So motor neuron disease is a very general Term for a class of diseases that affect both upper or lower motor neurons.In the United States, we often refer to this as a LS atrophic lateral sclerosis, but a LS is only one of a number of different motor neuron diseases. So as an example, if the disease only affects upper motor neurons, the cells in the cortex, the brain, then it's referred to as primary lateral sclerosis. And when the disease only affects lower motor neurons, those cells only in the spinal cord, it's considered spinal muscular atrophy.These are all much more rare subtypes where the most common disease is

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Johns Hopkins University.  Jeffrey D. Rothstein speaks about the pathology and mechanisms underlying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, advances in ALS research, and current strategies towards the development of therapies.

ALS - Motor Neuron Disease: Mechanism and Development of New Therapies

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