MORE THAN 40 LEADING ALZHEIMER’S ORGANIZATIONS CALL FOR DRAMATIC NEW STRATEGY TO STOP ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

More than 40 of the nation’s leading voices and organizations in Alzheimer’s research, drug discovery and care today announced a series of aggressive and innovative recommendations to transform the current trajectory of Alzheimer’s disease, now slated to kill millions of Americans and to cost the nation over two trillion dollars in the coming decade.

“Alzheimer's is a progressive neurodegenerative disease which is uniformly fatal and for which there are no effective treatments,” said Howard Fillit, MD, who is Executive Director of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, which is a member of LEAD.

“The Obama Administration has a unique opportunity to set the nation on a new course with Alzheimer’s disease. An entire generation of baby boomers will be turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 19 years, and we have no sustainable long-term answer for them to this disease epidemic. It cannot be emphasized enough that we are in a race against time to stop Alzheimer’s disease before it becomes America’s single largest public health, fiscal and economic threat.”
The recommendations by Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer’s Disease (LEAD) are directed to the Congressionally-mandated Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care, and Services – the committee tasked with advising on the first-ever national action plan to deal with the growing Alzheimer’s disease crisis.

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects an estimated 5.1 million Americans and, absent disease-modifying treatments, that number is expected to rise exponentially in the coming decades. To significantly advance progress in Alzheimer’s research, care and prevention, experts who prepared the LEAD report propose the following vital recommendations:

· Triple the amount of funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, while reducing the current duplication of research efforts as well as spurring innovation through a new outcomes-oriented research strategy.

· Create incentives to drive investment in new Alzheimer’s disease therapies through enhanced market exclusivity for companies delivering treatments to market, development of large-scale patient registries to reduce the time and cost of recruiting thousands of individuals to clinical trials, and focusing attention on the development of qualified biomarkers to shorten the time needed to assess the effectiveness of new drug candidates.

· Reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of care for people with Alzheimer’s disease by implementing at a national level proven models of caring for individuals with the brain disorder and their caregivers, developing critical assistive tools and services for family caregivers, and adequately reimbursing healthcare professionals for improved high quality care.

· Establish a dedicated fund at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to invest with private investors in new start-up drug discovery companies that are developing innovative treatments and therapies with the best likelihood for reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending on Alzheimer’s disease care.

· Prepare for the explosion in Alzheimer’s cases by building a healthcare workforce skilled in the care of people with the disease and by ensuring that adequate and effective services and support care are accessible to all families coping with the disease.


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