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The Jake Kennedy ALS Fund, launched last month by Jake and Sparky Kennedy, supports research at UMass Medical School to find a cure for ALS. A Jan. 20  column by Kevin Cullen details the man behind the fund, recently diagnosed with ALS, and the kindness he and his wife have shown since launching Christmas in the City 30 years ago.

“After her husband was diagnosed with ALS, Sparky’s attitude was, ‘We will beat this. And we’re going to raise a million dollars,’” Cullen reports in the column. “The Jake Kennedy ALS Fund will support research at UMass Medical School, where Dr. Robert Brown’s work to cure ALS is bearing fruit.”

All funds contributed to the  will support the work of Robert H. Brown Jr., MD, DPhil, the Leo P. and Theresa M. LaChance Chair in Medical Research, and professor of neurology. Zack Kennedy, PhD, one of the Kennedy’s four children, is a postdoctoral researcher at UMMS and collaborates with Dr. Brown on helping to find a cure for ALS.

Brown is an internationally known researcher and clinician leading the quest to cure ALS and other neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases. He is credited with leading a team of researchers who discovered the first gene linked to the inherited form of ALS, a protein anti-oxidant known as superoxide dismutase, or SOD1.

Learn more about the Kennedys in the  and in the Jake Kennedy ALS Fund video, below.