To honor ALS Awareness Month, this episode of Get Well with Dr. Shel features my good friend and one of my heroes, Dr. Merit Cudkowicz. She is the Director of the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS, Chief of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as the Director and the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She has recently launched the first of its kind platform trial initiative in ALS, the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial, a program that will greatly accelerate therapy development in ALS. Please consider donating to the Healey Center or ALS Heroes to benefit further developments in ALS treatments.

Timestamps:

[03:38] What exactly is ALS, and what are the current available treatments?

[05:27] Why is ALS such a hot-button research topic? [Hint: it involves a bucket of ice-cold water]

[10:97] What are the risk factors for ALS- and the preventative measures you can take through lifestyle changes

[17:52] Testing new ALS drugs- four at a time!

[25:17] Gene therapy, stress stimuli, and other neurodegenerative diseases

[37:81] ALS adaptive technologies: the brain-computer interface