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Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging Brian Duke presented the Pennsylvania State Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders on February 7, 2014 to Governor Tom Corbett.  The plan provides recommendations to the Governor on addressing the epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders in the commonwealth.  The report contains seven recommendations that were designed to address awareness, private and public partnerships, brain health, care and early diagnosis, family and caregiver support, healthcare delivery and workforce and research.  To view the Pennsylvania State Plan for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders, click here.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), the Alzheimer’s Association and The W. Garfield Weston Foundation have joined forces to  to inspire scientists to envision research projects that will use existing data and/or biological samples from two large-scale biomarker studies: the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).

The three organizations have created and funded a new research grant program — Biomarkers Across Neurodegenerative Diseases — that will support initiatives including those that:

• analyze datasets to test hypotheses related to aging and neurodegenerative disorders;
• seek to identify panels or pathways that may play a role in disease mechanisms, such as around inflammation;
• pursue shared or disparate biochemical markers of disease risk, onset or progression

Although Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are distinct conditions, mounting evidence shows possible links between the genetics and brain changes associated with them. For example, analysis from PPMI has shown that levels of a protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid-beta) are lower in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with Parkinson’s compared to individuals without Parkinson’s. In addition, postmortem studies have found heightened load of amyloid-beta in the brains of some people with Parkinson’s and increased presence of a Parkinson’s-implicated protein (alpha-synuclein) in some people with Alzheimer’s.

Read more about the new initiative here.

The New York Times reported that the National Institutes of Health, ten drug companies and seven nonprofit organizations have initiated  a partnership intended to speed up development of drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Participants in this five-year, $230 million effort will share data, meet regularly and work together to determine which findings are likely to lead to effective treatments. Their findings and data will be made publicly available.

The project is unique, said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

“We are getting together in a way that has not happened before,” Dr. Collins said. “We are bringing scientists from different perspectives into the same room. They will leave their egos at the door, leave their affiliations at the door.”

“This is the type of ADNI-like partnership many of us have seen an urgent need for,  and I am excited Francis Collins has made this happen,” said John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, Co-Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) and Director, Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The goal of the partnership is to find new drug targets: molecules that can be attacked in order to stop or slow a disease. The Alzheimer’s initiative also aims to find reliable molecular signals of whether dementia is progressing, so that new drugs can be tested early enough to avert irreversible brain damage.

Read the full New York Times article here.

The Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, presents Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director, National Institute of Mental Health, on February 6, 12:00pm – 1:00pm in the BRB II/III Auditorium. His topic will be “Rethinking Mental Illness.” More information at http://www.med.upenn.edu/psych/rounds.html.

President Obama has signed a funding bill containing an unprecedented $122 million increase for Alzheimer’s research, education, outreach and caregiver support.

The new federal funding allocated for Alzheimer’s disease includes a $100 million increase for the National Institute on Aging for Alzheimer’s research, which will be added to what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates will be $484 million in Alzheimer’s research funding across NIH in fiscal year 2013. A further $3.3 million has been provided to support Alzheimer’s caregivers, $4 million to train health professionals on issues related to Alzheimer’s disease, $10.5 million to expand the home and community based caregiver services and $4.2 million for outreach activities to raise awareness. Additionally, the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative will receive $30 million to support brain research that could impact several diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke was at the Penn Memory Center recently for an interview with Jason Karlawish, MD for our Making Sense of Alzheimer’s disease project. Jonatha has a new musical play – My Mother Has Four Noses (#4noses)- opening on February 14 at the Duke on 42nd Street theater in NYC.

Her one-woman show weaves story and song together to tell the experiences of caring for her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, during the final two years of her life. Click here to see her post on Facebook after her interview with Dr. Karlawish.

AARP’s radio production, the 2 Boomer Babes Radio Hour, is a weekly feature that highlights a variety of issues relevant to the boomer generation, with discussion topics ranging from caretaking of elderly parents, to  health, popular culture, and relationships. Hosts Kathy Bernard and Barbara Kline recently produced several segments on Alzheimer’s disease including  interviews with Jason Karlawish, MD,  Associate Director of the Penn Memory Center, on the November 10 and December 29 programs. Listen to these and other Boomer shows here.

United States House and Senate negotiators unveiled an “omnibus” bill to fund the federal government that includes $122 million in additional Alzheimer’s funding, the largest-ever increase in federal funding for Alzheimer’s research and care programs. Learn more about how you can encourage passage of the bill at the Alzheimer’s Association.

The January 14, 2014 issue of the Philadelphia Tribune features a story on Raymond W. Holman, Jr.’s “Portraits of Alzheimer’s Caregivers” exhibit on display at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine through February. Reporter Ayana Jones interviewed Dr. Jason Karlawish, Associate Director of the Penn Memory Center, about the exhibit.

“We heard about (Mr. Holman’s) work from coverage in other media,” Dr. Karlawish said.  “We were deeply intrigued because it’s great art that is very relevant to our mission, which is making sense of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and related disorders,” he added. “We are particularly impressed and excited that he focused on people who are often underrepresented and underappreciated in the world of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia – namely individuals of African American ancestry and people who are working and living in a caregiving role.”

Read the full article in the Philadelphia Tribune here.

In an effort to develop a coordinated and collaborative approach to the development of dementia research studies and treatments, the UK hosted a G8 summit on dementia on December 11, 2013 in London. The gathering of health and science officials, researchers, pharmaceutical companies and senior industry figures aimed to identify an international approach to dementia research and policy. Topics included improving the quality of life for people affected by dementia; improving the prevention and treatment of dementia; and developing ways to stimulate greater investment and innovation in dementia research.

The summit was broadcast live via the G8 Dementia webpage here.

The Group of Eight (G8) is a forum for the governments of eight of the world’s largest national economies and includes the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.