UMass team raises $79K for ALS in Boston Marathon

Photo/Courtesy Claire Pelletier of Manchester, N.H., is ran her first marathon for her role model, her father, who was diagnosed two years ago with primary lateral sclerosis, or PLS, a nonfatal neurodegenerative disease similar to ALS.

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A team of five running the Boston Marathon April 16 in honor of a loved one raised more than double its goal for the UMass ALS Cellucci Fund, nearly $79,000.

This year's team was the seventh straight Boston Marathon in which runners have participated to benefit the fund. So far, they've raised almost $416,000.

Since its establishment, the UMass ALS Cellucci Fund has totaled nearly $5 million. The fund is named in honor of the onetime Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci, who died of ALS in 2013. Cellucci's physician, Robert Brown, is a neurology professor at UMass Medical School.

Runners who commit to raising at least $7,500 to support ALS research at UMass may take part in a John Hancock nonprofit program for the Boston Marathon.

ALS research at UMass, which has been pushed along through fundraising efforts like the Ice Bucket Challenge, reached a new milestone last month. A group of 250 researchers, led in part by UMass Medical School Professor John Landers, identified a new gene associated with the development of ALS, according to the ALS Association. Landers and a team of researchers also discovered a gene related to ALS in 2016.