Five things for pharma marketers to know: Tuesday, August 18

Biogen is linking hands with the ALS Association and Columbia University Medical Center in a collaboration that strives to better understand the genetics behind the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

“With any luck this could lead to possibly a cure or really just slowing down this awful disease”, said study author Jonathan Ling, a Johns Hopkins researcher, in a YouTube video explaining the work. The researchers will also save patients’ blood samples for future research.

“There’s this protein called TDP-43 that doesn’t seem to be doing its job in the neurons of ALS patients, and for the past decade we’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it’s doing”. This kind of ‘precision medicine, ‘ in which a treatment is tailored to a person’s unique genetic make-up, is already being used in the cancer field.

Up to 15,000 people in the US are reported to be suffering from ALS.

Harris said he’s known David Goldstein, the director of Columbia’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, since before he assumed that post a year ago.

“This project will provide a clinical deliverable to the 1500 patients that participate in the study”. Those genetic risks will be shared with participants and other medical experts, who could use them to develop individualized treatment plans.

Clinical data will be collected and curated through the NeuroBank system at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and cell lines will be developed at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

This month, the ALS Association relaunched the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign stating “this August, and every August, until there’s a cure (for ALS)”.

The ALS Association will invest $3.5 million of the $115 million it raised via last year’s ice-bucket challenge in a project to map the genes and clinical traits of 1,500 people with ALS, Bloomberg reports.