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A June 9, 2016 AlzForum.org article reported that “the Senate Committee on Appropriations approved a bill that would boost U.S. government funding for Alzheimer’s disease to almost $1.4 billion in fiscal year 2017.” The article featured UsAgainstAlzheimer’s chairman George Vradenburg. According to Vradenburg, “This is now a seamless exercise of annual increases with a clear plan to apply the funds in order to find a prevention or treatment by 2025.” Read UsAgainstAlzheimer’s statement on the bill here. 

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A June 9, 2016 Time.com opinion piece by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) called for an Alzheimer’s moonshot. According to Sen. Wicker, “Curing Alzheimer’s is our charge for the 21st century. American ingenuity has never shied away from opportunities to make a remarkable difference in people’s lives. Unleashing the power of competition and innovation—finding our “eureka” moment—is a key step toward this success.”

A June 9, 2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune opinion piece by Dr. David Schubert called for new approaches to Alzheimer’s drug discovery. According to Schubert, “Until funerals are held for the dominant but ineffective ideas driving current Alzheimer’s drug discovery, I believe that the only way that we are going to get a successful Alzheimer’s drug into the clinic is through the support of wealthy individuals. There are over 500 billionaires in the U.S. In the context of this amount of money, funding both the drug development costs in independent academic laboratories and collecting sufficient clinical trial data to determine if a drug candidate is likely to be safe and effective is not a large investment…Scientists like myself who have Alzheimer’s drug candidates stalled in the pipeline get emails several times a week from caregivers whose relative is dying from Alzheimer’s and want to know when our drug candidate will be in clinical trials and available to them. Wouldn’t it be great if we could say that the trials have started, thanks to the generosity of a wise individual who really does care about our aging population?” Schubert, Ph.D., is a professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

A June 9, 2016 AdWeek.com article highlighted the cover story of the July/August issue of Scientific American Mind which featured “the concept “cognitive reserve” can help delay the symptoms of older-age dementia.” According to the article, “Among the ways an ageing person can accumulate extra brainpower, he has found, is to maintain a sense of purpose in their life.”

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