Go casual for a cause – Alzheimer’s

Looking for a fun, simple way to raise money to fight Alzheimer’s? Get your company to participate in Casual for a Cause. With Casual for a cause a company encourages employees to dress down or wear jeans for a day (or more) in exchange for a small donation (usually $5) to the Alzheimer’s Association. We can provide you with a sticker (or you can use your own) to be given to each employee that pays the donation to dress down. Contact your local office for details.

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Focus on tau protein may offer a path to Alzheimer’s treatment

In the past decade, several promising drugs that target beta-amyloid, a protein that causes the sticky brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s, have failed to stop the disease. At this year’s Society for Neuroscience meeting, there are more than 100 papers on tau, which is responsible for the tangles that form in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s Association has funded numerous studies to help researchers better understand what role tau plays in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and how we might target tau abnormalities with treatments and for early detection.

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Volunteer spotlight: Mary Fus – Alzheimer’s

“When my Mom started forgetting things it was very noticeable because she had been in such good health most of her life. My Dad died when I was about to turn 7 years old and left my Mom to raise five children from the ages of 7 to 13 on her own, so she was always strong and independent. With the on-set of Alzheimer’s, it has taken away not only her ability to retain new memories but her independence.”
You can find this story and much more in the fall issue of our magazine.

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Alzheimer’s disease costs could hit $1.5 trillion a year by 2050

As baby boomers age, the annual cost of Alzheimer’s disease treatment in the United States is expected to reach nearly $1.5 trillion by 2050, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health. That figure will rise from what the researchers said is the current cost of $307 billion yearly. The researchers also said that the per-patient cost of treatment is expected to double from its 2010 annual price tag of $71,000.

Treating Alzheimer’s disease is already expensive business – now costing the U.S. $307 billion each year. But as the baby boomer population ages, the annual cost of treatment is expected to nearly quintuple to $1.5 trillion, according to a study from the University of Southern California. 

Published in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, the study used modeling by the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics that shows the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease soaring from 3.6 million to 9.1 million between the years 2010 and 2050.

At the same time, the per-patient cost of treatment is expected to double during that time from its 2010 annual price tag of $71,000, researchers say.  

One reason why Alzheimer’s carries such a heavy financial burden is that those with it need long-term caregiver assistance. That help comes either from paid providers or family members who often must abandon jobs to do so.  And those in the latter stages of the disease typically require 24-hour care provided by an institution.  Right now, Medicare and Medicaid absorb about 75 percent of the nationwide costs of the disease.

The study calls for more investment in research into ways to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, noting that  later onset would not only generate improvements in quality of life for patients and their families but also would bring about major financial savings to society.

Specifically, researchers calculated that a five-year delay in Alzheimer’s onset extends the patient’s  by about 2.7 years.  They also found that by 2050, such a delay in onset would  result in a 41 percent lower prevalence of the disease in the population, which would lower the overall costs to society by 40 percent. 

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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Alzheimer’s Association Joins Global Consortium to Strengthen the Drug Pipeline for Brain Diseases

Today, the Alzheimer’s Association announced its leadership role in the Neurodegeneration Medicines Acceleration Program (Neuro-MAP), which plans to uncover promising drugs for degenerative brain diseases in pharmaceutical company libraries and put them into early-stage clinical trials. Many potential drugs are languishing in laboratories because the companies who own them have moved in other directions. By identifying these projects and moving them forward, Neuro-MAP aims to bring these drugs closer to the people who desperately need them.

Partners in Neuro-MAP are: Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society (UK), ALS Association, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Motor Neurone Disease Association, MRC Technology, Northern Health Science Alliance, and Parkinson’s UK. The consortium represents more than 50 million people living with neurodegenerative conditions worldwide.

Neuro-MAP will ask pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to propose projects to the consortium. The Neuro-MAP partner organizations will decide which projects to take on by evaluating patient needs, scientific excellence and commercial potential. Projects taken on by Neuro-MAP remain the property of the industry partner, but the consortium will share in a proportion of the revenue generated if the product goes on the market. These funds will be reinvested in additional research.

Consortium program manager, MRC Technology, will augment the initial investment from Neuro-MAP partners by seeking co-investment from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, social investors, and venture philanthropists. As a result, the current target for total annual investment is in the region of $48 million.

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