Investigating the involvement of human derived astrocytes and motor neurons in the pathology of motor neuron disease.

肌萎缩性侧索硬化症（ALS）是一种神经退行性疾病，它会导致支配肌肉的神经（即运动神经元）死亡。最近使用小鼠ALS模型的研究表明，通常支持运动神经元的某些细胞可能直接导致ALS患者的运动神经元死亡。我们建议获得als患病的人类细胞，并研究这些细胞如何在“正常”组织中起反应。这些研究对了解ALS的病理过程具有临床意义。

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease, which results in the death of nerves that innervate muscle, known as motor neurons. Recent studies using mouse ALS models showed that certain cells that normally support motor neurons may be directly contributing to their death in ALS. We propose to derive ALS-diseased human cells and investigate how these cells may react in ‘normal’ tissue. These studies are clinically relevant in understanding ALS pathological processes.