The conference was held at the initiative of the Israels Association, which finances 15 different studies with the aim of finding a cure for the disease
150 researchers and doctors will participate in a medical conference for the study of the muscular dystrophy disease ALS. The conference will be held on Thursday, November 15, in Tel Aviv at the initiative of the Israels association with the aim of creating a platform for exchanging knowledge and receiving updates on innovations in research and attempts being made in Israel and around the world to find a cure for an incurable disease.
The main guest at the conference will be Prof. Jeffrey Rothstein from the ALS Research Center at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who will share with those present the findings from the research works conducted at the university. Later in the conference, researchers from the Weizmann Institute, the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and the Tel Aviv Medical Center will speak.
The Israels association was established at the initiative of David Cohen, a businessman from Haifa who contracted the disease, to finance the research of this "orphan disease" and to find a cure for it. The uniqueness of the association is that the patients, their families and friends who decided not to give up and fight to find a solution to the disease are active in it. Among the association's activists and trustees, Dov Lautman, chairman of the executive committee of Tel Aviv University, Nobel laureate Prof. Aharon Chakhanover, Prof. Peretz Lavi, vice president of the Technion and many others.
So far, the association has funded 15 studies in Israel and is coordinating an effort to expand research in the field. The members of the association and the scientists are full of optimism and believe that the progress in medicine in the last decade can lead to a breakthrough in ALS research in the near future.
Muscular dystrophy is an incurable disease and medicine does not know the reasons for its sudden onset in healthy people. The disease causes the loss of the ability to move the arms and legs, the ability to speak and the ability to breathe independently. The disease does not affect the mental capacity of the patients at any stage and they are condemned to remain "imprisoned inside their bodies", until death. In Israel there are about 600 patients with the disease and every year about 200 people die from it. The average life expectancy of ALS patients is 2-5 years.
Information about the activity on the Israels Association website
