The ALS Association announced a new collaboration between the Gladstone Institutes and Biogen to discover novel drug targets for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). of new ALS therapies: The Svendsen lab at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, site of the groups' stem cell core; the Cleveland lab at the University of California San Diego, engaged in development of novel therapeutics; and the Finkbeiner lab at the Gladstone Institutes, which is affiliated with the University of California at San Francisco. The Neuro Collaborative is funded by The ALS Association with a $5 million grant stemming from the funds raised through the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Part of the Neuro Collaborative's mission is to develop potential therapies that can be delivered to pharmaceutical companies for clinical trials. The Gladstone-Biogen collaboration is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2016. The collaboration will include developing novel cellular models of ALS and building an infrastructure for high-throughput screening to identify new drug targets and develop small molecule therapeutics for ALS.