The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced that a lab led by Michael E. Ward, M.D., Ph.D., investigator at the NIH’s NINDS is part of one of 30 pairs of researchers to receive an award from CZI’s Neurodegeneration Challenge Network (NDCN).

For every cell in the body there comes a time when it must decide what it wants to do for the rest of its life. In an article published in the journal PNAS, NIH researchers report for the first time that ancient viral genes that were once considered “junk DNA” may play a role in this process.

The National Institutes of Health plans to invest $25 million over 5 years in a new program to spur innovative research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive and fatal neurological disease that weakens and eventually paralyzes voluntary muscles.