During the summer of 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge was ubiquitous on social media. The fundraising challenge for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease, raised $115 million in the eight-week period. Now, research funded by the phenomena has led to a new discovery.
The ALS Association contributed $1 million to Project MinE, to launch the U.S. branch of the 15-country collaboration to sequence the entire genome of 15,000 ALS patients and 7,500 individuals without ALS. FoxNews.com reported on the project in 2015; their goal is to find as many genetic factors that contribute to ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, as possible, to then identify potential targets for therapy.