USA2 SPOTLIGHT

Join A2A’s (Adversity to Advocacy) Alzheimer’s Messages of Hope campaign. Give hope. Get hope. All in 30 seconds. Share YOUR story with the help of professional journalists. The A2A Alzheimer's Advocacy Resource Center (ARC) is an outreach project in partnership with the A-List (an UsAgainstAlzheimer’s initiative) and Leeza’s Care Connection, aiming to help individuals impacted by Alzheimer’s step into Alzheimer’s advocacy.

MUST READS

A March 20, 2017 Healthcare IT News article reported on the reaction of the research community to the proposed 2018 budget cuts, which would slash the NIH budget by almost 20%. The NIH spends about 85% of its annual budget on grants to thousands of researchers and medical institutions across the country. For the past three years, the University of California, San Francisco has received more in NIH biomedical grants than any other public university in the country. “It’s tremendously shocking,” said Keith Yamamoto, UCSF’s Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy. Officials at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and other universities voiced similar concerns. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, released a statement saying the agency is “dedicated to fulfilling our department’s mission to improve the health and well-being of the American people.”

RESEARCH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

A March 21, 2017 The Hoya article reported that Georgetown University Medical Center has begun two trials to test nilotinib (manufactured by Novartis), an FDA-approved leukemia drug’s ability to modify the progression of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, the two most common neurodegenerative diseases. These studies are based on years of research by Charbel Moussa, Scientific and Clinical Research Director, Translational Neurotherapeutics Program at Georgetown. In a 2015 study, it was found that small doses of the drug reduced build-up of toxic brain proteins without killing the brain cells. The Alzheimer’s trial will last six months and include brain imaging and spinal fluid collections. “This study isn’t for treating symptoms, but rather aims to modify disease progression,” according to Fernando Pagan, Medical Director, GUMC Translational Neurotherapeutics Program. If these trials are successful, then phase-three studies could begin with many more participants at study sites all over the country.

YOUTH VOICE

A March 21, 2017 India West article highlighted the work of Nihal Satyadev in founding the Youth Movement Against Alzheimer’s (YMAA). After attending a national Alzheimer’s summit in 2015 and realizing he was the only millennial in attendance, he sprang into action at UCLA (where he was an undergraduate at the time). “The gap was surreal,” said Satyadev of the age gap at the Alzheimer’s summit. “I was hearing about all these horrifying facts that were going to affect me and my peers more than any other generation. The healthcare system, the amount of rooms available in senior homes, and the burden it will weigh on my future family. But I was the only millennial in sight.” YMAA is among the largest nonprofit campus organizations offered at colleges and high schools, providing students with research and scholarship opportunities, offering chapters promotional Web space, and advocates via lobbying and providing free youth caregiver services.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

A March 15, 2017 KTAR News article reported on the work of researchers at the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, a collaborative group of scientists researching and treating dementia. Specialists Dr. Edward Zamrini and Dr. Pierre Tariot, of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, are both working on AD prevention projects. “We had this idea that prevention research could be done,” said Tariot, who admits the idea was considered a little out there by industry standards. “Not many people believed in it, which is always a mark of a good idea.” For their studies, they needed people who carry the Alzheimer’s gene, will live long enough to complete the study, and to find them before they are diagnosed. They were fortunate to be connected with Dr. Francisco Lopera, who is working with the now renown families near Medellin, Colombia, who carry the genetic code for Alzheimer’s tracing back to a single Spanish immigrant in the 1600’s. “Let’s take people who have no trouble with memory and thinking, but are destined to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s pretty soon. Let’s give them a promising experimental therapy and let’s see if we can stave off the inevitable loss of memory,” Tariot proposed. “We have an agreement with our industry partner that the data and the samples collected during this study will be shared with the entire scientific community.” This month, the enrollment phase was completed and the data collecting is now underway.