$100,000 awarded to Dr. Honglin Luo, University of British Colombia.
Dr. Luo’s work is aimed at understanding if there is a role for enterovirus (EV) infection in the development of ALS. In work published last year, she found an intriguing set of similarities between motor neurons in ALS and cells infected with EV, including abnormal redistribution, clumping and cleavage of TDP-43. This disruption in TDP-43 is seen in 98% of ALS cases. As a result, Dr. Luo will test if chronic, persistent EV infection many contribute to or cause sporadic ALS by looking for EV presence in human ALS post-mortem tissue, determining if EV infection can accelerate or worsen disease in established ALS mouse models, and examining if mice making EV proteins develop ALS-like symptoms. If successful, Dr. Luo will then seek to identify the mechanisms of action as a means of developing therapeutic strategies.