In a stem cell research breakthrough, scientists have reprogrammed skin cells from two elderly patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis — also called ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease — to act like stem cells. From a report by the Online NewsHour:

[T]he researchers coaxed those cells into becoming motor neurons, the type of nerve cells impaired by ALS.

Researchers will be able to use the lab-grown cells to learn more about why ALS patients’ own motor neurons deteriorate and die, and eventually to test new drug treatments for the disease.

“What we’ve shown for the first time is that it’s possible to use these cells to make the actual cell type that’s destroyed in this disease,” said Kevin Eggan, a Harvard University biology professor and a co-author of the study. Read more…

Watch a film about wheelchair users, including a man facing the effects of ALS

Ernie Wallengren was a writer-producer for many television shows, including The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, Baywatch, Falcon Crest, Knight Rider, Flipper, Promised Land, and Life Goes On. Wallengren was a Utah native who served a two-year Mormon mission in Central America and later graduated Magna Cum Laude from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in communication.

Wallengren was diagnosed with ALS in 2001 at the age of 48. For the documentary ROLLING, Ernie was the third person to volunteer to take a videocamera and film his experience as a wheelchair user. He started filming after he had been in a wheel chair for one year. Watch the entire film now.