Seven research projects for ALS

The President of the AriSLA Foundation, Mario Melazzini, announced the projects selected with the 2021 Call, aimed at researchers from Italian universities and public and private Italian non-profit research institutes, which could cover the areas of basic, preclinical or observational clinic. Seven new projects will be funded this year with a total investment of € 874,950. There are 10 research groups involved, including Rome, Milan, Trento, Padua and Turin, which will make it possible to expand knowledge on still little explored mechanisms, linked to the onset of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation, and will verify the effectiveness of some molecules in the slow the progression of ALS in preclinical models, Melazzini specified.
AriSLA, born in 2008 from the synergy between AISLA Onlus, Cariplo Foundation, Telethon Foundation and Vialli and Mauro Foundation for Research and Sport Onlus – added Melazzini – has invested more than 14 million euros to date, supported 142 researchers and 92 projects from which more than 277 scientific publications of significant impact for the scientific community have been derived. Anna Ambrosini, Scientific Director of the AriSLA Foundation, highlighted the importance of investing in various research fields to address the complexity of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that today in Italy involves about 6,000 people, explaining how the funded projects are identified: Thanks to the Our selection process, based on the peer review method (or peer review), projects are evaluated by international experts who select excellent research on the basis of the scientific value of the proposed study.

Selected projects

The four pilot projects explore new innovative approaches to better understand the mechanisms of neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation and evaluate new therapeutic approaches on preclinical models of ALS: SENALS, coordinated by Alice Migazzi of the Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrated Biology (CIBIO), Universit degli Studi of Trento; mitoALS, coordinated by Elena Ziviani of the Department of Biology, University of Padua; ReNicALS coordinated by Savina Apolloni of the Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata; and BREATH, coordinated by Michela Rigoni of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padua. Among the multi-year and multi-center studies, two aim at the preclinical experimental verification of gene therapy approaches with viral vectors or antisense oligonucleotides: respectively GATTALS ‘coordinated by Valentina Bonetto of the Mario Negri IRCCS Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan, with partner Manuela Basso the Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrated Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento; and SWITCHALS coordinated by Mauro Cozzolino of the Institute of Translational Pharmacology, National Research Council, Rome, with partner Nadia D’Ambrosi of the Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata. The third multicenter project EVTestInALS, an observational clinical study that intends to identify new biomarkers for ALS coordinated by Manuela Basso of the Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrated Biology (CIBIO), University of Trento, together with three partners: Andrea Calvo dell ‘AOU City of Health and Science of Turin and Department of Neuroscience’ Rita Levi Montalcini ‘, University of Turin; Valentina Bonetto of the Mario Negri IRCCS Pharmacological Research Institute, Milan, and Francesco Rinaldi of the Tullio Levi-Civita Department of Mathematics, University of Padua.