EMORY ALS CENTER
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease which eventually costs patients their ability to perform such basic functions as walking, dressing, speaking, swallowing, and breathing. I recently had the honor of meeting the team at the Emory ALS Center—the only program in metro Atlanta working to understand this devastating and ultimately fatal disease and to support the patients and families affected by it.
The Emory ALS Center, directed by Jonathan Glass, provides a comprehensive program of multidisciplinary patient care and cutting-edge clinical and basic research. “We are one of the largest clinical centers in the U.S., currently caring for about 400 patients and their families,” Glass says. “The majority of our patients partner with us in our research efforts, providing DNA, spinal fluid, and tissue samples for research. In this way we are able to connect our basic research activities with the essential clinical data that makes our collections so valuable to investigators locally, nationally, and internationally.”
As the only ALS program in the Atlanta metropolitan region, Glass says, the center provides “a ‘home’ for these patients and their families. This differentiates Emory from other Atlanta health care facilities – none of which support a focused ALS program. Indeed, we are the primary referral center for ALS in Atlanta, and for some patients around the southeast and the world.”
Glass is understandably proud of the ALS team, which is leading progress against the disease in both patient care and research. “In the clinic,” he says, “we provide a full complement of experts to address the varied problems experienced by our patients – including physical, occupational, and respiratory therapists, speech pathologists, dieticians, social workers, and even wheelchair technicians to adjust and fix any problems with our patients’ most important piece of equipment. Our clinical staff are dedicated to this patient population, with most working with us for more than a decade. In the lab, those working on ALS include investigators from Neurology, Cell Biology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Biostatistics, and Computer Science. These collaborations allow for multiple avenues of investigation, largely focused on patient derived data and tissues, which we believe provides important relevance to the human disease.”
Thank you, Jonathan Glass and the entire ALS Center team, for helping us improve lives and provide hope!
~Ravi I. Thadhani, MD, MPH
Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, Emory University
Executive Director, Woodruff Health Sciences Center
Vice Chair, Emory Healthcare Board of Directors
