ALS TDI founder and d'Arbeloff founding director, James Allen Heywood, gave a riviting presentation at this year's TEDMED conference in San Diego.  The event is a one-of-a-kind conference that brings together worldwide leaders in medical innovation and research.  According to its founders, 'TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital.  Together, this encompasses more than twenty percent of our GNP in America while touching everyone's life around the globe.'
 
Since it started testing drugs in 2001, ALS TDI has conducted more than 100 investigations into potential treatments for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).  On the bleeding edge of science from the beginning, the team at ALS TDI conducted the first human stem cell transplantation in ALS, developed an industrial-scale drug screening infrastructure that utilizes nearly every possible therapeutic modality, published the first guidelines for using the preclinical model of disease and has been educating the ALS community about how drugs move, or perhaps don’t move, toward the clinic.
 
“Today, ALS TDI is more than just the world’s leader in ALS therapeutic development.  It represents a paradigm shift in how preclinical discovery is done.  From its professional staff to its patient focused Board it aligns the best of what is possible in scientific research with a patient's today mentality.  With funding directly from those that have the most to gain or lose by our success or failure, ALS TDI focuses on asking and answering the tough questions, driving innovations and responding quickly to new information.  The development of ALS TDI's lead candidate for human trials, a protein biologic known as ALS TDI 00846, exemplifies how the investments made by hundreds of families in ALS TDI over these past ten years is paying off.  Compared to the costs invested in other diseases this may be  among the most efficient discovery programs ever run.  I believe that this will be the first in a long line of robustly validated therapeutics worthy of clinical trial, and I know TDI will not stop until solutions are found,' remarked Heywood following the TEDMED conference.
 
Heywood joined an diverse group of speakers at the 2009 event, including Craig Venter, ALS TDI collaborator David Agus and Sanjay Gupta.  For more information about TEDMED, visit: http://www.tedmed.com/what