Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease. While there is currently no cure, efforts are underway to change that - and to establish better treatments.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California (UC) system are addressing ALS challenges and opportunities at scale by collaborating across disciplines to accelerate research and development. Toward this end, the UC Livermore Collaboration Center hosted the second annual UC ALS Workshop on May 15-16.
"Neurodegenerative diseases in general, and ALS specifically, really impact our communities," said Nicholas Fischer, a scientist at LLNL and the neuroscience liaison to the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF). "At LLNL, we use a tremendous array of unique capabilities and expertise in support of our national mission, and these can be leveraged to make a significant positive impact to public health."
The highly interactive, multidisciplinary workshop maximized UC's system-wide ALS expertise, bringing together university physicians, biomedical researchers, engineers and computational scientists at all career levels with Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory colleagues, industry and investment leaders, pALS and cALS (people with ALS and caregivers for people with ALS) and funding ecosystem managers to address ALS challenges and collaborate across disciplines and sectors.
The keynote address, "Untying the Gordian Knot of ALS and FTD - Should We?", was given by Bruce Miller, a behavioral neurologist at UC San Francisco (UCSF). In it, he discussed the connections and dissonances between ALS and dementia.
The one-and-a-half-day workshop was filled with informative presentations, engaging panel discussions, insightful poster and lightning talks and energizing discussion sessions.
"There are so many scientific conferences. We wanted to provide a unique opportunity for the UC system to gather with potential partners in more of a dynamic style of meeting that would promote networking and open discussions and result in collaborative projects and engagements," said workshop organizer Amy Gryshuk, who is the associate director of the Office of Strategic Alliances at UCSF Innovation Ventures.
"We're hoping that workshop attendees will walk away energized as a tight-knit community and partner across multiple disciplines and institutions to create transformative impact through collaborative research proposals and projects," she continued.
LLNL Director Kim Budil and LLNL scientists Jim Brase, Antoine Snijders and Elizabeth Wheeler were joined by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) scientist Suzanne Baker in a panel that shared the research done at DOE laboratories. Moderated by Fischer, the panel briefed the audience on the bioscience, engineering and computational research at LLNL and LBNL and emphasized the importance of building new partnership models, particularly through LLF.
"Livermore's long-standing interactions with the UC system, especially through the Livermore Lab Foundation, have provided connections with the ALS community," said Fischer. "It started fairly small, with individual principal investigators, but with this workshop, we are trying to build larger institutional interactions and collaborative science."
"Facilitating greater collaboration between UC researchers and our LLNL colleagues combines academic excellence with cutting-edge computational and scientific capabilities. Such collaboration is especially vital in tackling complex challenges like neurodegenerative diseases," said Sally Allen, LLF's executive director. "LLF is not only deeply committed to accelerating discoveries in this research space but also building the next generation of scientific leaders."
In future years, the workshop organizers across UCSF Innovation Ventures; the UC ALS Centers from UCSF, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles and UC San Diego; LLNL; the UC Livermore Collaboration Center; the UC National Laboratories; and LLF hope to extend the workshop attendees, pulling in additional DOE complex colleagues and industry and investment colleagues.
