Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRIS - News), a therapeutic drug development company, today announced that the recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA contains an article that describes the use of a small molecule Hedgehog signaling pathway agonist to promote the generation of new motoneurons. Motoneurons are nerve cells that are most typically found in the spinal cord, and their purpose is to establish functional connections with other tissues, usually muscles, to control movement and other functions. Damage to motoneurons can occur as result of injury, such as spinal cord injury, or as a result of disease, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
