Our previous work in human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from the bone marrow of several sALS patients (ALS-hMSCs) identified four ALS biomarkers, CyFIP2, RbBP9, TDP-43 (also known as TARDBP) and SLPI, that showed abnormal mRNA expression levels (Nachmany et al., 2012; Lilo et al., 2013). Here, SLPI is linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.