Wilfredo “Freddie” Colón research has recently earned a $1 million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH grant will support Colon’s study of the hereditary version of the disease, called familial ALS or FALS. He is attempting to understand why mutants of the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD1) fail and misfunction in FALS.
On average, FALS strikes people who are around 47 years of age, says Colon. Most patients die within two to five years.
According to Colón, ALS starts “when good proteins go bad.” Understanding just why they go bad is a necessary first step toward developing medicines that will help ALS patients live with a manageable disease instead of a death sentence.
