Agilent Technologies is collaborating with Dr. Steven Gross, a faculty member in the department of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, to advance research in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Agilent will provide the latest mass spectrometry technology to support his research, working toward an understanding of how the most common form of the disease develops in the body.

Sporadic ALS accounts for about 90% of all ALS cases and has no obvious genetic driver. Gross and his collaborators—Dr. Giovanni Manfredi, a professor of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell, and Dr. Lorenz Studer, director of Sloan Kettering Institute’s Center for Stem Cell Biology—are investigating the molecular underpinnings of that form of ALS. The Agilent tools will empower the investigators to apply a multidisciplinary-based approach to understanding the roots of the disease. Accurate-mass mass spectrometry will enable the researchers to test the hypothesis that fibroblasts express systemic metabolic markers that inform ALS.

“Translational research using a combination of biological disciplines—genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics—is an emerging trend in academia,” said Steven Fischer, market director for life science research in academia and government at Agilent. “Most researchers, however, do not know how to perform multi-omic analysis, and successful examples are needed. Agilent is working with the Gross lab at Weill Cornell to advance the multi-omics-based approach to disease research, using sporadic ALS to demonstrate the power of this method.”