San Francisco 49ers Dwight Clark makes his iconic “Catch” against the Dallas Cowboys
American Football great Dwight Clark was renowned for having the safest hands in the game when he played for the San Francisco 49ers. But in September 2015 he was diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) after not being able to use those hands to open a package of sugar. Less than three years later he was dead.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – ALS’ formal title – is a nasty disease that relentlessly destroys the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control movement and breathing. It is always fatal. There are only two drugs approved for ALS and they don’t work for most people. There is no cure.
That’s why CIRM chose ALS to be the subject of its latest Facebook Live Ask the Expert event (click here for the event’s FaceBook Live page). There’s a real need for new approaches to help people battling this deadly condition. And CIRM is funding two clinical trials that hope to do just that.
This Ask the Expert event will feature Clive Svendsen, PhD, Director of Cedars-Sinai’s Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, and Robert Baloh, MD, PhD, Director of Neuromuscular Medicine at Cedars-Sinai. They’ll be joined by Ralph Kern, MD, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Medical Officer at BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics. The panel will be completed by CIRM Senior Science Officer Lila Collins.
The four will discuss the clinical trials that CIRM is funding with Cedars-Sinai and BrainStorm, and look at other promising research taking place.
“Ask the Experts About ALS and Stem Cells is an opportunity for everyone in the ALS community to hear about the very latest in stem cell research targeting this devastating disease,” Svendsen said. “There has recently been some progress in the search for new treatments, which has energized all of us looking for effective therapies—and one day, a cure.”
Because Facebook Live is an interactive event people will be able to post comments and ask questions of the experts.
Dr. Baloh says we are now at a crucial time in the search for new approaches to help people with ALS.
“Many researchers believe that stem cells and gene therapies hold great promise for finding effective treatments, and more trials are needed to explore that potential.”
Our Facebook Live event, “Ask the Experts About ALS and Stem Cells” is tomorrow – Tuesday, July 31st – from noon till 1pm PST. You can join us by logging on to Facebook and going to the FaceBook Live broadcast link at: https://bit.ly/2uYQ8wM
Also, make sure to “like” our FaceBook page before the event to receive a notification when we’ve gone live for this and future events.
We want to hear from you, so you will be able to post questions in real-time for the experts to answer or, you can email them directly to us beforehand at info@cirm.ca.gov
If you miss the event, not to worry. A recording of the session will be available in our FaceBook videos page shortly after the broadcast ends.
We look forward to seeing you there.
The Stem Cellar 