ALS took his father. Now this Carleton researcher is fighting back
It was a conversation Daniel Knight will not forget. The Carleton University researcher's father had recently been diagnosed with ALS. What Knight said seems prescient now.
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'I just told him that one day I would be part of the solution. He said thank you. We really didn't need to say anything else.'
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Knight's sixty-year-old father, John, a 'self-proclaimed nerd' who loved everything to do with space and aviation, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of the neurological condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2019. He died just six months later, one of three siblings in his family taken by the devastating disease.
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At the time, Knight was a 19-year-old undergrad studying chemistry at Carleton University with no concrete plans for his future. He admits he didn't really know how he could be part of a solution to ALS, but felt strongly that he had to do something to help people with the disease that had been so prevalent in his father's family.
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'To be honest, I didn't have a clue. I just knew I couldn't sit back. The only thing on my mind was volunteering or fundraising.'
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ALS is a neurological condition that affects motor neurons — the wires that connect the brain to the muscles. Approximately 4,000 Canadians are affected. The majority will survive between two and five years after being diagnosed. Some, like John Knight, survive for less than a year. Others live beyond five years.
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His father's illness and the family history of the disease has driven Knight to be one of the researchers working to make a difference for ALS patients.
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Today, the 25 year old from Navan is working on his PhD in chemistry at Carleton and leading groundbreaking scientific research that is part of a wave of work raising hopes of potential new treatments for ALS.
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The support of one of his professors during his father's illness and her subsequent mentorship has helped shape Knight's research.
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Knight was in his second year studying chemistry when his father became ill. He had to navigate his studies while trying to spend time with his father.
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Among his courses at the time was one taught by Maria DeRosa, a chemistry professor and researcher who is now Dean of Science at Carleton. Her overwhelming support and sympathy, along with her approach to teaching and to students, made Knight think she was someone he would like to work with to continue his studies.
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He became interested in her work, which includes the use of aptamers. The synthetically produced single-stranded DNA molecules can selectively bind to any target they are designed to bind to, including specific proteins. That makes them an important research tool. Aptamers have a long list of potential applications — including in healthcare.
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As a patriotic German, during the First World War he developed a program to produce chlorine gas on a large scale as a chemical weapon. Not only did he develop the program, he supervised the release of the gas at the battle of Ypres in Belgium in 1915 that killed more than a thousand French and Algerian troops, earning him the title 'the father of chemical warfare.' Egas Moniz was a Portuguese neurologist who in 1949 was awarded the Nobel for 'his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses.' Later renamed 'lobotomy,' this surgical procedure severed the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain with the aim of treating such severe mental illnesses as schizophrenia and depression. Before experimenting with lobotomy, Moniz had established a reputation as an inventor by having devised 'cerebral angiography,' a procedure by which sodium iodide is injected into the carotid artery and travels to the brain. 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He also described a meeting with a fluorescent racoon that he thought could have been an extraterrestrial alien. Nobel laureates may bask in the spotlight, but that spotlight can sometimes illuminate dark corners.
