March 27, 2017

Today’s Top Alzheimer’s News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A March 24, 2017 Fierce Biotech article reported on the strong blowback against the 20% slashing of NIH funding in the President’s budget blueprint. UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, ASCO, J. Craig Venter (Human Longevity) and BIO all raised concerns about the proposed cuts. From this concern, a new group was formed, ‘The Coalition to Save NIH Funding,’ comprised of “Stakeholders in healthcare, research, pharmaceutical development, patient advocacy and other non-profit organizations.” A main focus will be to “Educate lawmakers and American citizens about the critical importance of investing in biomedical research." “We were dismayed to learn that the NIH is vulnerable to deep funding cuts,” said Carrie Jones, principal of D.C.-based JPA, the PR firm handing the Coalition. “Each day America benefits from the innovation and scientific discoveries made at the NIH. We won't sit idly by and watch critical research be stifled.”

MUST READS

A March 27, 2017 Huffington Post article highlighted the work of scientists at the Lund University in Sweden utilizing a type of super-bright, high-quality X-ray machine called a synchrotron accelerator. It is able to capture more detailed images of the brain at earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease than have been seen before, and the first time it has been used to look at this particular early stage of AD. The images contain important information about the beginnings of AD, namely that the plaque-causing proteins have a different structure than was previously assumed. “Alzheimer’s disease has been tremendously challenging for medical research mainly because it is a disease of aging that attacks the most complex thing we know: synapses, which allow us to think and remember,” said study author, Gunnar Gouras, Experimental Neurology Professor, Lund University.

A March 26, 2017 U.S. News article interviewed Dan Gasby, the husband and care partner to B. Smith, the famed former-model, author and TV host, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. "The brain is the most important thing in the body, the least understood and the most taken for granted," said Gasby. "You can replace corneas, you can modify arteries, but the thing above your eyebrows you can't change." Smith and Gasby are active AD advocates who decided on the day of her diagnoses not to hide and to share their story to benefit others. According to Gasby, “That's the problem we don't talk about the things that really matter. We'll talk about what the Kardashians are doing, what's the latest thing on some meaningless reality show, but the things you don't talk about are the ones that can kill you."

A March 25, 2017 San Diego Union-Tribune article and segment spotlighted the charitable giving of Darlene Shiley in San Diego to medical, scientific and arts causes. Starting in 1980, she and her late husband, Donald, who suffered from dementia in later life, have donated over $100 million, including establishing the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UC San Diego. “From the beginning, I felt it important to personally investigate the types of projects that we felt were largely unmet needs,” Shiley said.

POLITICAL INSIGHTS

A March 27, 2017 Washington Examiner article reported that Republicans in the House and Senate have spoken out against the proposed budget cuts to the NIH. NIH has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support and this year appears to be no different. "You don't pretend to balance the budget by cutting life-saving biomedical research when the real cause of the federal debt is runaway entitlement spending," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Chairman, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "For the last two years, Congress has significantly increased funding for biomedical research, and we should increase it again this next year." According to Eleanor Dehoney, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy, Research!America, "I think the budget was a disappointment, but it was not a setback. Congress will remain a champion for us."