The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research Program supports research into biomarkers, therapeutic interventions and symptom management approaches to find new treatments and care strategies for ALS, a presumptive condition of military service.
New ALS treatments and symptom management approaches, and ultimately cures, will directly impact current and future members of the military and their families.
“The advancements made because of [ALSRP] funding have been instrumental to changing treatment paradigms, discovering new potential drug targets, and advancing early phase clinical trials,” U.S. Air Force Major Timothy Fullman, fiscal year 2025 ALSRP Programmatic Panel member, said. “Since the inception of this program in 2007, progress towards meaningful treatment has been accelerated beyond a pace my family ever dreamed of back when my father lost his battle to ALS in 2003.”
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, ALS affects individuals who served in the military 1.5 times more frequently than those with no service history. While no reports to date identify how military service contributes to ALS, Service Members may be unable to avoid factors potentially associated with increased ALS risk, such as environmental or occupational exposures to chemicals or heavy metals, traumatic injury, and infectious diseases.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a rare neurodegenerative disease. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS disrupts the ability of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord to control voluntary muscle movements of the body, such as walking and talking, and muscles of the respiratory system, leading to difficulty breathing. The disease is progressive and often aggressive, meaning symptoms and muscle weakness get worse within a short period of time. Most people with ALS do not survive beyond five years after diagnosis. At this time, there are no cures available for ALS.
Brain-Computer Interface Restores Speech
According to the Government Accountability Office, brain-computer interfaces may help people with some types of disabilities or paralysis regain function and could also improve military capabilities. Brain-computer interfaces implanted in the brain or placed externally on the skull allow a person to control an external device, such as a computer, machine or robotic limb, using brain signals resulting from thoughts. The interfaces demonstrate the potential to help troops in a future battlefield guide or communicate with various types of vehicles or other electronic devices merely by thinking.
Advancements in brain-computer interface technology made in the health care sector may accelerate ongoing developments in the military sector, and vice versa.
In fiscal year 2022, the ALSRP funded a Pilot Clinical Trial Award, led by Sergey Stavisky, Ph.D., and his team at the University of California, Davis, to evaluate a brain-computer interface, called BrainGate, for translating brain activity into words for patients living with ALS who lost their ability to speak. The researchers surgically implant tiny electrodes into the motor area of the patient’s brain responsible for commanding movement of the lips, tongue, jaw and voice box. Through the interface, BrainGate records complex motor activities and transmits the signals to an external computer to enable decoding of thoughts of speech into digital vocalization of words.
“The CDMRP ALSRP has been instrumental in enabling the BrainGate team to develop a new type of assistive technology called a voice neuroprosthesis for people who cannot speak due to ALS,” Stavisky said. “This device directly and instantaneously outputs what the user is trying to say, based solely on their measured brain activity.”
Initial findings of the BrainGate technology demonstrated real-time brain-to-voice synthesis of speech with 97.5% thought-to-word accuracy, allowing the study participant to speak with the research team and his friends and family, and to participate in videoconferences and even to draft documents and emails. While still in development, the researchers further expanded the capabilities of BrainGate to capture elements of expressive speech important to conversation, such as pitch, tone and word emphasis.
“For most people, speech is essential to who we are and how we interact with our community,” Stavisky said. “My goal with this research is to continue to improve this technology to the point that it can provide a widely available means for people with ALS to communicate with close to the same speed and expressive richness that they had before ALS.”
New ALS Therapeutics Advance to Clinical Trials
In fiscal year 2014, the ALSRP funded a Therapeutic Development Award, led by Justin Ichida, Ph.D., and his team at the University of Southern California, to identify potential drug candidates and their cellular targets for treatment of ALS. By screening motor neurons made from patients’ cells against more than 30,000 chemical compounds, the researchers identified PIKFYVE as a key protein involved in the development of some forms of ALS.
Ichida’s early discovery research showed inhibiting the PIKFYVE protein extended survival in preclinical models of ALS and paved the way for the development of several new therapeutics for both sporadic and genetic forms of ALS. The new treatment candidates are now in early phase clinical trials funded by other sources.
“The ALSRP funding enabled us to investigate the efficacy and therapeutic mechanism of action of PIKFYVE inhibition in preclinical ALS models, which led to initiation of ALS clinical trials for PIKFYVE inhibitors by other groups,” Ichida said. “If this therapeutic approach is successful, we anticipate improved quality of life and survival for ALS patients. Importantly, our research suggests the PIKFYVE target will apply to both familial and sporadic ALS patients.”
More About the Importance of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research
The National ALS Registry estimated 30,000 people living with ALS in the United States as of November 2024 and, every year, about 5,000 people receive an ALS diagnosis.
Ichida and Stavisky recognize biomedical research advancements over time drive new discoveries and treatments forward to improve clinical outcomes and better address the needs of the ALS community.
“We continue to pursue research into ALS because of the large unmet need and the devastating toll the disease takes on patients and their families,” Ichida said. “The science has advanced tremendously in the past couple of decades and we feel that these new insights are likely to enable the design of new, effective therapies.”
“This is a line of research where I often can see tangible progress week by week, and that’s very motivating,” Stavisky said.
Since the ALSRP’s initial appropriation in fiscal year 2007, the program received $309.4 million, including $40 million in fiscal year 2025, supporting research for new treatments now advancing through clinical trials or in development with industry partners.
For more information about the ALSRP, visit https://cdmrp.health.mil/alsrp/default.
| Date Taken: | 08.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.11.2025 13:58 |
| Story ID: | 545348 |
| Location: | US |
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