August 13, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

MUST READS

An August 12, 2015 Inside Philanthropy article profiled billionaire Paul Allen’s Alzheimer’s philanthropy. According to the article, “The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation wants to move the success rate of Alzheimer's research above that .4 percent, and it believes the best way to do that is by supporting research into the fundamental biological causes of the disease. To that end, last month, the foundation announced $7 million in grants to five Alzheimer's research teams at research institutions in the US and England…The supported projects will investigate emerging areas of research in Alzheimer’s, including the role of genes, white matter damage, regulation of pH levels and a recently described brain-wide clearance system. Also supported is work to develop new methods and tools to study the basic processes involved in the disease and identify potential new treatments.”

An August 12, 2015 Forbes opinion piece by Howard Gleckman called for a Medicare redesign to account for diseases like Alzheimer’s and the need for long-term care. According to Gleckman, “Now people live decades with heart failure. Dementia, which barely registered as a health problem in 1965, has become a major issue. In large part, that’s because people routinely live into their 80s, the age at which Alzheimer’s and similar diseases commonly strike. People didn’t get Alzheimer’s in 1965 because something else killed them first. But Medicare is not set up to care for those with chronic disease. It does not provide long-term supports and services, which are critical to people with complex conditions. It has few mechanisms to help patients manage multiple chronic diseases. Much of the care these patients need isn’t strictly medical at all. Yet medical treatment is pretty much all Medicare will pay for.” Howard Gleckman is a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

An August 12, 2015 San Francisco Business Times article compared ALS advocates’ efforts to access experimental drugs to early AIDs activists. According to the article, “If only Mike and other ALS patients could get “compassionate use” access to Neuraltus’ drug, they wouldn’t have to wait for a formal clinical trial to see if the compound slows ALS from progressively robbing them of the ability to walk, touch, swallow, speak and, finally, breathe. In the process, these one-person studies would help Neuraltus understand more about the drug…Yet a grassroots band of ALS patients and caregivers — under the banner of Hope Now for ALS— are pressing Casey, the FDA and others, invoking a give-it-to-me-now strategy that AIDS activists used to win early access in the 1980s and 1990s to experimental HIV-fighting drugs. Ultimately, they hope to convince someone to cover Neuraltus' costs for compassionate use or an expanded access program in parallel with a clinical trial.”