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Challenge accepted: ALS Association shares plans for Ice Bucket Challenge donations

This summer’s Ice Bucket Challenge raised a whopping $115 million for the ALS Association.

We’re now learning how the foundation is planning on spending that money: New research projects.

“We are tripling the amount annually that we spend on research,” ALS Association President and CEO Barbara Newhouse told TIME. “We have a sense of urgency, but we also recognize that we have to be good stewards of the donor dollars as we move this forward as quickly as researchers can research.”

Newhouse added that some of the money will also be used to improve the treatment for people currently living with ALS.

“Thanks to the Ice Bucket Challenge, we are able to continue to improve the most comprehensive pipeline for ALS treatments in the world,” Newhouse said in a statement. “We now have tremendous momentum in the search for a cure. Our integrated mission, combined with increased collaboration, is accelerating our ability to move potential treatments through the drug development process and improve the support for people living with ALS at our care centers.”

“Together, we now have the unique opportunity to fundamentally change the nature of this fight,” Bill Thoet, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The ALS Association, said of the additional funding for research and care services.

The ALS Association has already distributed more than $20 million of the Ice Bucket Challenge money to hospitals and labs around the world. Some of the first projects to receive funding include one trying to sequence the genes of ALS sufferers, one working with pharmaceutical companies to advance drug treatments, and one developing a gene therapy that might reduce ALS’ spread through the body, TIME reported.

Newhouse emphasized that, while the money raised is enabling a significant increase in research initiatives, much more will likely be needed to bring an end to the disease.

"I’m always a glass half-full kind of person," she said. “But we would be kidding ourselves if anybody believed that $100 million is going to be all that’s needed to find an effective treatment.”

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