$100,000 awarded to Dr. Minh Dang Nguyen at the University of Calgary.
In recent years, scientists have learned that changes in gut bacteria can influence health. For example, studies have linked reduced quantities of good bacteria with a variety of health conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes and eczema.
Some types of gut bacteria secrete a substance called lipopolysaccharide (LPS) that is known to stimulate the innate immune response. The innate immune response takes place when the body identifies foreign invaders as a threat, increases inflammation and initiates other defensive processes in an attempt to remove them.
For this project, Dr. Minh Dang Nguyen and Dr. Gerald Pfeffer at the University of Calgary will use ALS mouse models to study forms of LPS from five different gut bacteria. They will investigate whether these specific forms of LPS cause inflammation and affect ALS disease onset and progression. If they do change the course of ALS in mice, the researchers will examine inflammatory processes and the composition of the mice’s gut bacteria to understand the underlying processes.
To further examine a connection between resident bacteria and the disease, Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Pfeffer will also test saliva from 50 people with ALS and 50 people without ALS to look for differences in their oral bacteria. In the future, changes in oral bacteria could serve as a useful biomarker to identify changes in ALS disease progression or responses to treatments in clinical trials.