Carol Kleiner was a warrior: wife, mother, grandmother, friend, rower, leader, and a woman who knew what she wanted.
If not for Carol and her husband Bob, a trained chemist, Project ALS wouldn’t be anywhere close to the promise of kleinerpaullone, a new ALS drug candidate that the Project ALS Therapeutics Core has designed to treat all forms of ALS.
When she was diagnosed with ALS in 2013, Carol knew the way forward: keep rowing, grow her family, and lead the fight for a new ALS treatment. She knew that the effort to develop a truly effective new ALS treatment would take years, millions of dollars, and that it probably wouldn’t come in time for her to try.
Still, in 2016, when the Kleiners recognized the promise of the paullones—a set of promising compounds that weren’t yet safe for human consumption—they worked with medicinal chemists at the Project ALS Therapeutics Core to make them safe—to make them into medicine.
Carol Kleiner died from ALS this August. She’d be proud to know that, in the last six months, kleinerpaullone has shown extraordinary promise.
A kinase inhibitor that is now brain penetrant, engages with two cell stress pathways, and rescues sick ALS motor neurons in every preclinical model of the disease is getting ready for its move to clinical trial.
This is where Carol and the Kleiner Family, through their homegrown initiatives, Carol’s Crew and Date with a Plate, remind us that the next twelve months are critical.
We miss you, Carol. You’re with us as we head up the river with hope and determination into a productive 2026.
