Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive disorder that damages movement-regulating nerve cells (neurons) in the brain and spinal cord. As more of these neurons degenerate and die, people experience worsening symptoms over time such as difficulty walking, talking, swallowing and, eventually, breathing. There is currently no cure for ALS.
Van Andel Institute’s Dr. Qiang Zhu is working to find new therapies for ALS by investigating the underlying mechanisms of the disease. We caught up with Dr. Zhu to learn more about his research, what his lab is working on and how discoveries in the lab might one day transform ALS care.
What is the big question you are trying to solve?
Dr. Zhu: We’re working to uncover the roots of ALS. In most cases, the factors that give rise to the disease are unknown. Only about 10% of cases are familial, which means there’s a family history of the disease. Ninety percent of cases are classified as sporadic, meaning there is no family history. In our lab, we aim to understand the mechanisms that give rise to each form and develop new therapeutic approaches to directly help people. The more we know about the causes of ALS, the better we can design treatments to address these factors.
What is your lab working on?
Dr. Zhu: To my knowledge, we are one of the only labs dedicated to ALS research in West Michigan. Our work centers on critical aspects of ALS, ranging from uncovering how the disease develops to exploring new therapeutic strategies.
One major focus area of our research is gene therapy. This type of treatment is promising because it seeks to fix the root cause of the disease. There is currently one approved drug that targets a gene known to contribute to ALS. However, this approach requires people to visit the clinic multiple times a year to receive treatment, which can be challenging as the disease progresses. We hope to design new therapeutic strategies to target and silence damaged genes, with the goal of administering the treatment only once.
New drugs and therapies can be tested in different disease models that mimic ALS conditions in people. For example, using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, we can take skin or blood cell samples from patients and reprogram them into stem cells. These can then be turned into nerve cells, allowing us to study how ALS affects them and to test new drugs in a petri dish.
What are you most excited about in your research?
Dr. Zhu: I am most excited to find a new therapy that effectively treats ALS and improves quality of life. Since we started the lab in 2022, we’ve been working to set up platforms that help us more precisely study the disease and evaluate potential treatments. Once we identify a promising treatment, the next step is to move it into clinical trials. That is the pipeline we’re working to build here at VAI — transforming discoveries in the lab into actual ways to help people.