Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known by its acronym ALS, is a household name. It all began with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which became the world’s largest global social media phenomenon. During the summer of 2014, more than 17 million videos were uploaded to Facebook of people dumping buckets of ice water on themselves, including celebrities like Lady Gaga and Donald Trump, as well as our own Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil.
Then came the tremendous performance of Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning portrayal of distinguished British physicist Stephen Hawking in the film The Theory of Everything. A perfect finale to a year in which awareness of this cruel disorder soared and the drive to find a cure intensified.
A few months later, ALS hit close to home when the heart-breaking story of the young and talented Bjorn Formosa shocked the nation. Bjorn perfectly summed up his ALS dominated reality in the following stark words: “One second you’re planning for your life, next you’re planning for your funeral.”
ALS is a condition that affects special cells in the brain and spinal cord, which pass messages to the muscles telling them what to do. These cells are called motor neurons and their demise leads to weakness and wasting of muscles, causing loss of mobility in the limbs and difficulties with breathing and speech.
ALS can be inherited, meaning that a faulty gene is passed from one generation to the next. However, most of time, this is not the case. Rather, the cause is a lethal cocktail of DNA defects and harmful environmental exposures that impinge on the fragile health of motor neurons.
The harsh reality is that there is as yet no effective treatment, but hope springs eternal in laboratories all over the world, including ours at the University of Malta. We have long joined the race against time to identify the elusive components of a network essential for the workings of the motor neuron.
We are scouting the genome or the complete set of DNA in ALS patients to identify flaws that break down the motor neuron. Through DNA engineering we can generate animals that have the same deleterious change we discover in ALS patients. And finally, by attempting at reversing ALS symptoms in animal models, we are one step close to taming this beast of a disease.
The recent approval of a wonder drug to treat spinal muscular atrophy, the most common motor neuron disease of childhood, heralds a new era where the impossible can become possible. It is only by supporting research that a death sentence can finally be overturned.
Dr Ruben Cauchi leads the Motor Neuron Disease Research Programme at the University, supported by the ALS Malta Foundation.
Did you know!
• Lace is often used on St Valentine ‘decorations’. The word ‘lace’ comes from the Latin laques, meaning ‘to snare or net’, as in to catch a person’s heart.
• Richard Cadbury produced the first box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day in the late 1800s.
• Shakespeare mentions Valentine’s Day in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in Hamlet.
• The condom company Durex reports that condom sales are 20-30 per cent higher around Valentine’s Day.
• Approximately one billion Valentine cards are sent each year around the world. An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent during the Christmas holidays.
• A kiss on Valentine’s Day is considered to bring good luck all year. So go ahead.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think
Sound bites
• The most popular theory about Valentine’s Day origin is that Emperor Claudius II did not want Roman men to marry during wartime. Bishop Valentine went against his wishes and performed secret weddings. Imprisoned by Claudius, Valentine fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed “from your Valentine”.
• Valentine’s Day was first introduced to Japan in 1936 and has become widely popular. However, because of a translation error made by a chocolate company, only women buy Valentine chocolates for their spouses, boyfriends or friends. In fact, it is the only day of the year many single women will reveal their crush on a man by giving him chocolate. The men do not return the favour until White Day, a type of ‘answer day’ to Valentine’s Day, which is on March 14.
• To find out some more interesting science news, listen in on Radio Mocha every Monday and Friday at 1pm and on Radju Malta 2.