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Reverse ALS & Blindness? | MOONSHOTS

13 May 2026 · 1 min

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Life Biosciences researchers reversed macular degeneration in animal models and showed motor neurons can regrow in ALS-affected mice using OSK therapy plus chemicals. Kelly Rich's work suggests ALS might be reversible, while Wan Cheng Lu's team partially reversed both wet and dry macular degeneration.

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There's so many variations of ALS, the Lou Gehrig disease. Can we expect a cure for all of them anytime soon? And secondly, macular degeneration. There've been clinical trials in the UK. Is there a cure out there?
We have a lot of data on that, both at Life Biosciences. My former student, Wan Cheng Lu, has a paper that he's hopefully going to publish soon and work in my lab in collaboration with a Korean lab. All three of us have shown that both wet and dry macular degeneration are reversible to some extent in gold-standard animal models. I mentioned ALS, and Kelly Rich is a remarkable postdoc who the Friends of Sinclair Lab know well. She is working on ALS in the lab. Kelly is seeing that the, the regrowth of motor neurons back to the muscle is possible using OSK therapy, and even with the chemical compound cocktail, which means there is some hope that the disease isn't just going to always be progressive, that we are showing, at least in animals, I think for the first time that it is a reversible condition.