Major Milestone Achieved - Cure Alzheimer's Fund

HOW WE PUT EVERY DOLLAR TO WORK

Every dollar given to Cure Alzheimer's Fund is immediately used for research with the best chance of leading to new therapies and, one day soon, a cure.

How do we do this? Cure Alzheimer's Fund has no endowment, and all our overhead and expenses are paid for by the organization's founders. So, when you give to Cure Alzheimer's Fund, you know exactly where your money is going.

So far, we've funded almost $16 million in research in 14 different institutions across the country. We seek out the best and brightest scientists who are working on cutting edge research, and we give them the resources they need to bring us closer to a cure.

The projects we fund are based on a 4-part roadmap, which we believe is the quickest way to a cure:

(1) find all the genes that contribute to risk for the disease;
(2) figure out which ones contribute the most and have the best prospects for treatment;
(3) determine how these genes actually lead to increased risk;
(4) and find the drug therapies that can most safely and effectively disrupt this link.

For more information on this approach, click here.

Organizational Structure

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is governed by a Board of Directors; administered by a small, fulltime staff; and guided scientifically by a Research Consortium. A Scientific Advisory Board audits the research program to mak e sure it is consistent with the objectives of the Foundation.

Cure Alzheimer's Fund™ is a 501c3 public charity. Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is a "doing business as" name for the Alzheimer's Disease Research Foundation, federal tax ID # 52-2396428.

Updates from the Board

Update from the Board: December 2009

Dear Friends, Why should you care about Alzheimer’s research? Currently, for every dollar spent on Alzheimer’s care, only a penny is spent working toward a cure. This is a bad equation for a disease that is estimated will cost well more than $100 billion in care (Medicare and Medicaid alone) i... (Read more)
Cure Alzheimer's Fund Closes 2008 with a Huge Win!

We set out three years ago to jumpstart progress toward a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and we are succeeding. The Alzheimer’s Genome Project™ (AGP), targeting the full set of Alzheimer’s genetic risk factors, identified seventy new genes, a tremendous result and truly breakthrough researc... (Read more)
Major Milestone Achieved

When we first met with Dr. Rudy Tanzi to discuss Cure Alzheimer's Fund, we asked him two things: Can you recruit a group of first-class Alzheimer’s researchers to guide us in our investment in basic research into the causes of the disease? What is the most important first step we can tak... (Read more)

Reports

We are thrilled to announce our first milestone achievement — Dr. Tanzi and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have identified about 70 genes containing variants that either confer risk for, or protect against, Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It has been almost three years to the day, and we have invested approximately $3 million to reach this point.

This is breakthrough research at its best.

It leads the Alzheimer’s research community to new opportunities to develop a cure. You may see a number of news items about Alzheimer’s research emanating from the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Chicago, but none will be more important than this achievement. Why?

All drugs developed to date to attack Alzheimer’s have been based on information provided by the first four genes identified more than 20 years ago. These four genes account for only about 30 percent of the genetic activity of the disease.
By completing the “genetic map,” we now can account for almost 100 percent of the genetic basis for AD.
With the 70 new target genes and their pathways identified, we can accelerate development of effective drug therapies significantly simply by being able to take many more—and better aimed—“shots on goal.”

The results have been submitted in two papers to two top-ranked peer-reviewed journals. We are pleased to provide you with this pre-publication summary.

What’s our next task? Without pausing, we need to provide the resources to follow up on these newly identified genes to find out how they affect risk and which ones are most amenable to the most immediate pharmacological intervention. We can help start this process with funds we have reserved for this moment, but we cannot completely fund the next round of investigations without significantly more money and collaboration with other sources of funding, both public and private.

Please take a moment to read the summary. And accept our thanks for your help in making the achievement of this breakthrough research possible.

Sincerely,

Jeff and Jacqui Morby
Henry and Allison McCance
Phyllis and Jerry Rappaport
Josh and Anita Bekenstein