Ling Shan receives grant from ALS Foundation

Since January 1, 2012, the ALS Foundation has been financing scientific research on a project basis. They have now awarded a grant to the project of neuroscientist Dr. Ling Shan in the group of Prof. Dr. Dick Swaab, for his research into abnormalities in the hypothalamus in patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

ALS is a nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease gets worse over time: more and more muscles fail because they no longer receive signals from the brain. However, majority of research was focusing on investigating the motor symptoms. While with this research, Shan wants to focus specifically on autonomic symptoms including energy metabolism, circadian and sleep problems.

Hypothalamus

All of those symptoms are highly associated with hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the center for temperature regulation of the body, hunger and thirst feelings, the day and night rhythm (the biological clock) and emotional behavior. It essentially regulates the balance of our body. The expectation is that there are specific cell types in the hypothalamus that are affected in ALS.

Netherlands Brain Bank

To investigate this, Shan will look at brain tissue donated to the Netherlands Brain Bank. This tissue is from patients who died at an early stage of the disease: not from the disease itself, but as a result of legal euthanasia. This means that the disease in these patients was not yet advanced, allowing a focus on the earliest symptoms.

Shan hopes that this research can help detect ALS at an earlier stage and expects to be able to find this way evidence-based novel treatment targets that may alleviate dysfunctions in circadian sleep-wake functions, mood disorders and metabolism, for patients with ALS.