"Sometimes she glares at the painting of Jesus in her dining room. I just let it loose said Mary Kleiss at her Royal Oak home. I look at that picture and I say You get down here and put on your boxing gloves and lets get this over with. I am so damned angry. Her son Regis was diagnosed two and a half years ago with Lou Gehrigs disease  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. It is he writes as if God is torturing me. The disease kills with stunning efficiency  deadening its victims peripheral nerves withering muscles and in a final assault shutting down their ability to breathe. An estimated  people have it at any given time  are diagnosed yearly. Most die within years. There is no cure. The disease has reduced Regis Kleiss  a formerly thickbodied shot and discus thrower and captain of the track team at Dondero High School to a bony echo of himself. Paralyzed except for some minor movement of his head he will spend his final days on a feeding tube. ALS leaves its victims minds intact. Its a miserable damned disease his mother said. Now a clinical trial overseen by the University of Michigan may provide hope. It is cuttingedge and audacious work  the only ALS trial so far in which neural stem cells are injected directly into a patients spinal cord. So far  patients have undergone the procedure  two of them twice  as the FDA monitors its safety. One patient showed a remarkable improvement for a while though UMs Dr. Eva Feldman who heads the research cautions not to read too much into that. The other  showed no improvement. The trail is tentative and early. But when the rest of a persons life has been compressed to an expectancy of two to five years it is hope nonetheless. The trial has been based in Atlanta since  but UM has requested approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand it and move it to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The trial involves injecting  million stem cells into the spine. The ancestry of the cells dates to the spinal cord of an aborted fetus in . The cells are different from the embryonic stem cells that were the subject of a controversial ballot proposal in Michigan in  when voters approved lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research. Feldman and others theorize that these new cells act as nursemaids to damaged nerve cells sending out repair signals and somehow halting the progression of the disease. The procedure worked in rats. It has been shown to be safe in pigs. If the FDA approves moving the trial to Ann Arbor Michigan patients will have access to an experimental treatment that not only might offer insight into a disease that kills an estimated  Americans a day but also push back the battle lines against other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers or Huntingtons. Read the entire story here http For patients We appreciate your interest in our stem cell trial and as this article mentions we are working to bring it to Michigan. However we are not at this time able to accept patient applications. Please check this site monthly for any updates."