Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Wouldn't it be wonderful if antiviral drugs could be used to treat or even prevent what is presently an incurable brain disease that affects 3,000 Canadians per year? We believe this may be possible for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's Disease, a condition where the death of muscle-controlling nerve cells in both the brain and the spinal cord leads to paralysis and eventually death. Currently, due to a lack of effective treatments, affected individuals have a life expectancy of only 3-5 years after their initial confirmed diagnosis. Our lab recently discovered that similar biological disease features seen in ALS patients are also seen in cells infected with a group of viruses known as enteroviruses. It has been proposed that enterovirus infection might contribute to ALS development, but this idea has never been fully studied. With the goal to gain a deeper understanding of this potential connection, I will first look into if virus infection in mice brain can result in similar ALS-related protein changes seen in ALS patients. In parallel, I will also use a mouse model of ALS that mimics the disease progression of ALS in human to test if a viral infection can intensify disease progression, and if so, what are the underlying relationships. Together, these results will provide evidence to support the association between viral infection and ALS development. Lastly, I will identify key interactions between the virus and human cells using computational and biological methods to potentially determine how viral infection is related to developing ALS and to select for potential therapeutic targets. The results from this project may open doors to using anti-viral drugs to treat and prevent ALS, providing hope for all those suffering from this devastating disease in Canada and worldwide.