PatientsLikeMe, the leading online community for people with life-changing conditions, announces the launch of its Genetics Search Engine for its ALS patient community. Through the PatientsLikeMe platform, patients can now share genetic information and find others like them by the gene (and even the specific mutation in that gene) causing their condition.

“This is the world’s first search engine where patients can share disease-linked genetic information and use it to find other patients like them,” says James Heywood, co-founder and chairman of PatientsLikeMe. “Combined with our outcome, treatment, and symptom information, this represents a patient-centered model for realizing the goals of personalized medicine today.”

A major step toward incorporating genetics into the PatientsLikeMe platform for all diseases, the Genetics Search Engine is designed to allow patients to share additional data on genetic causes of ALS and help the research community learn more about the disease.

“With 64 patients sharing genetic information in the community, we have already begun to see variations in the progression rate by specific mutations,” says Catherine Brownstein, Ph.D., geneticist and researcher at PatientsLikeMe. “Transformative questions about how the disease varies by cause might be able to be answered far quicker than before.”