Eva Feldman named one of The Detroit News Michiganians of the year

 Dr. Eva Feldman, oversees research aimed at therapies for ALS patients

Kim Kozlowski/ The Detroit News

Dr. Eva Feldman was in her 30s and raising two young children when she met a woman just like her.

The woman, however, was stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — a progressive, neurodegenerative disease — and she eventually died.

Feldman's first ALS patient led her to devote her career to caring for others with ALS and finding a cure. Three decades later, she is overseeing the first clinical trial using stem cells in ALS patients.

"I have diagnosed thousands of people with the disorder … but all have succumbed to the illness," says Feldman, a University of Michigan neurologist.

"My patients give me the inspiration to come back to my laboratory and work as hard as I can to understand what causes this horrible disease as well as fast-track new therapies."

Feldman has researched many potential therapies for ALS and other neurologic diseases, including growth factors — proteins that allow human growth, that increase during injury and disease, and appear to have therapeutic benefits. A clinical trial was launched with a growth factor that was effective in animals but only transiently helpful in ALS patients.

That led Feldman to think of a more targeted and aggressive approach, which led to the clinical trial that is injecting stem cells into the spinal column of ALS patients. It is in the first phase to determine safety, under way at Emory University in Atlanta and expected to expand soon to other sites, including U-M.

 Read more at detnews.com.