• Mayo Clinic Minute: Icy Challenge Fires Up Research

a man in a business suit having ice water dumped on his head for the ALS ice bucket challengeIn the two years since the Ice Bucket Challenge burst on to your social media feed, scientists all over the world have been busy using the donations it generated to fuel research about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of benefits that have come from all the research money, including supporting the infrastructure for multi-center collaboration,” says neurologist Dr. Eric Sorenson, head of the neuromuscular diseases division on Mayo Clinic's Rochester, Minnesota, campus.

Dr. Sorenson, a past director of the Mayo Clinic ALS Clinic, says that collaboration will be a key in the search for answers about ALS. “Nobody, individually, has all the samples needed to study the disease. And, so we have to pool it together.”

In this Mayo Clinic Minute, reporter Jeff Olsen speaks with Dr. Sorenson about how much was raised in the Ice Bucket Challenge and how those dollars are transforming the search for a cure for ALS.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (1:00) is in the downloads. Read the script.