Taubman Gift Advances ALS Research

Twenty years ago, retail pioneer and philanthropist A. Alfred Taubman lost a good friend to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — a horrifying fatal disease that’s better known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Eva Feldman and Alfred Taubman Photo: Gregory Fox

The memory of watching New York Senator Jacob Javits slowly succumb to the nerve-killing condition has never left Taubman’s mind. That memory has motivated him to support ALS research at the University of Michigan Medical School and beyond for some time. Now, he has greatly increased that support with a new $5 million gift to Michigan. In addition, Taubman will contribute his share of the royalties from his new book, Threshold Resistance.

The gifts will support ALS studies led by neurologist and researcher Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., who is the Russell N. DeJong Professor of Neurology and whose lab has already received two $1-million gifts from Taubman. Feldman is considered a national leader in ALS treatment and research, and heads the U-M Program for Neurology Research and Discovery.

Together with a group at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Martin Marsala, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology, Feldman and her team will work on several scientific fronts to try to stop or slow the disease. Working at first with animals, then ALS patients, they hope to make quick progress. Among the weapons they will deploy against ALS are genetic tools to keep nerve cells from dying, new ways of delivering promising drugs and genes directly into nerve cells, and a potential treatment based on injecting stem cells into the spinal cord.

“It’s hard to imagine a more devastating disease than ALS,” says Taubman, “and we have some of the highest incidence rates in the country right here in Michigan. Dr. Feldman and her team are doing miraculous work, and it’s important that they have the resources to build on their momentum. I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I am an optimist who believes in the extraordinary possibilities of modern medicine. This is important work that must continue.”

Feldman calls the gift a major boost to research. “Mr. Taubman’s generous funding allows us to venture into exciting new territory with stem cells. It gives our patients great hope that our new research with our California colleagues will translate the promise of stem cell technology into the reality of therapy for ALS patients.” 

—Kara Gavin

For more information on the Taubman gift:
www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/alsgrant.htm

 

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