Ice Bucket Challenge Helped Make Big ALS Breakthrough [Video]

A few years back, the 'Ice Bucket Challenge' was ubiquitous on Facebook. You couldn't get away from it. Everyone was dumping ice on themselves, from big name celebrities and sports stars to average Joes. 

If you did it -- or paid some money to someone who did -- you can feel proud today, as that money paid for a scientific breakthrough to help people suffering from ALS.

Almost 17-million people were dumping freezing cold water on their heads in 2014 and posting it to Facebook in hopes of raising money for ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease)? The ALS Association announced that the massive, socially-driven find raising challenge helped raise enough money to help make an important research breakthrough.

In just eight weeks, $115-million was donated to the ALS Association, 67% of which was dedicated to advancing research for treatments and a cure, the non-profit reports.

One million dollars went towards Project MinE, a University of Massachusetts Medical School Project that was able to identify a gene that is responsible for the degenerative disease. The gene, identified as NEK1, provides another potential target for therapy development, and brings scientists one step closer to treating the neurological disorder.

"The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge enabled The ALS Association to invest in Project MinE's work to create large biorepositories of ALS biosamples that are designed to allow exactly this kind of research and to produce exactly this kind of result," said Dr. Lucie Bruijin, Chief Scientist at the ALS Association.

So all this pain was not in vain.