MDA’S WINGS OVER WALL STREET RAISES
$1 MILLION TO FIGHT LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE

TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 29, 2006 — The sixth annual Wings Over Wall Street gala took flight last night, raising $1,010,213 to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s ALS research program and helping to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Some 800 attendees, including celebrities and New York financial leaders, gathered at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square with one objective — to raise funds for MDA’s ALS research program seeking a cure.

Lisa Marie Utasi, director and senior equity trader at ClearBridge Advisors, and Mary McDermott-Holland, senior vice president of Trading at Franklin Portfolio Associates, were the event’s co-chairs.

Liz Claman, co-anchor of CNBC’s “Morning Call” and anchor of “Cover to Cover,” and MSNBC anchor Rita Cosby, host of “Rita Cosby: Live and Direct,” hosted the event, which featured a VIP cocktail reception, live and silent auctions, and a car raffle.

The auction items included a round of golf with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, lunch with Walter Cronkite, two round-trip tickets from New York to London, a guest appearance on the TV drama series “Forensic Files,” tickets to Yankees games, and a VIP tour for four people of CNBC’s global headquarters and studio.

Since 2001, the event has raised more than $6 million for ALS research. The funds will benefit the research teams of Hiroshi Mitsumoto, co-director of the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig MDA/ALS Research Center at Columbia University in New York, and Jeffrey Rothstein, director of the MDA/ALS Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Three awards also were given for outstanding contributions to the quest to cure ALS.

Neurologist Merit Cudkowicz, an MDA research grantee at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was the Diamond Award recipient. The award is named for the event’s co-founder, Toni Diamond, a United Airlines flight attendant who died in 2004, four years after receiving a diagnosis of ALS.

Bill and Claire Collier of Stamford, Conn., received the Spirit Award for their commitment to raising ALS awareness and funds for ALS research. Claire, a mother of three, received a diagnosis of ALS in 2003.

Tom Rice of West Windsor, N.J., was given the Michael P. Beier Award, which honors a person who motivates others to help find a cure for ALS. Rice, managing director in equities for the Credit Suisse Group, was a close friend of Michael Beier, the former Wings event chairman who died of ALS in 2003.

ALS is prominent among the neuromuscular diseases in MDA’s program. It progressively destroys the nerve cells controlling muscles in healthy adults, leading to paralysis and eventually death. The exact cause of the devastating disease, which affects some 30,000 Americans, is unknown.

MDA leads the scientific battle to find a cure for the disease, funding more ALS research than any other voluntary health agency in the United States and offering the most comprehensive range of services. People with ALS receive care at 37 MDA/ALS centers or at any of MDA’s 235 outpatient clinics across the country.

To learn more about MDA’s ALS Division, visit www.als-mda.org, or call (800) 572-1717.

MDA is working to defeat more than 40 neuromuscular disease through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive services, and far-reaching professional and public health education. The Association’s programs are funded almost entirely by individual private contributors.