Cure Alzheimer's Fund

Cure Alzheimer's Fund, a 'doing business as' name for the Alzheimer's Disease Research Foundation, is a 501(c)(3) public charity established to provide funding for targeted research into the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mission

The mission of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund is:

About

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund exists exclusively to fund targeted research to hasten the slowing, stopping or reversing of Alzheimer’s disease, and welcomes donations of any size.

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund has no endowment and passes funds raised directly to selected research as determined by the Cure Alzheimer’s Research Consortium. The Foundation has no financial or intellectual property interest in the research funded, and will make known the results of all funded research as soon as possible.

The Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors; administered by a fulltime staff; and guided scientifically by the Research Consortium. A Scientific Advisory Board audits the research program to make sure it is consistent with the objectives of the Foundation.

History

Cure Alzheimer's Fund was incorporated in September 2004 and was founded by three families; the Morbys of Pittsburgh and the McCances and Rappaports of Boston. All shared the belief that strategically targeted funding (a venture approach) will yield results with a higher probability for positive impact against the disease than funding either a broad array of basic research or various "translational" later-stage research based on the few Alzheimer's genes discovered to date.

Dr. Rudy Tanzi and six other leading Alzheimer's disease researchers and clinicians from major universities volunteered to become the Cure Alzheimer's Research Consortium to develop a Research Roadmap that starts with completion of the genetic map of the disease and progresses to analysis of the resulting genes and the biochemical pathways emanating from them to discover the most likely places for therapeutic intervention.

Since its founding, Cure Alzheimer's Fund has funded research in six states, notably The Alzheimer's Genome Project Initiative, which has the objective of identifying all relevant remaining Alzheimer’s genes that have not yet been discovered, thereby identifying more targets for the development of therapeutic interventions.

Research

In 2007, Cure Alzheimer's Fund supported 12 research projects, funding 11 major researchers (and their assistant researchers and lab technitions) at eight different institutions across the country in work that covered Alzheimer's disease from genetics to biomarkers.

The Alzheimer's Genome Project

The core research effort currently funded by Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, an estimated 3 year, $3+ million project led by Dr. Rudy Tanzi, with four main components:

1. Alzheimer’s Genome Map: Genotyping, analysis, follow-up, and confirmatory studies to identify more than 95% of all remaining AD genes, thereby providing many more targets for the development of effective therapeutic intervention.

2. Alzheimer’s Brain-Genetic Study: Comparing the pathological features of autopsied brains of deceased AD patients with those of non-demented subjects to link AD pathology to genetic factors.

3. Alzheimer’s Clinical-Genetic Study: Tracking patients with “benign forgetfulness”, mild cognitive impairment and AD using imaging and cognitive tests to link clinical features of AD to genetic factors.

4. Alzheimer’s Gene Database: Internet database and forum available on the web at www.AlzGene.org, the project gathers and analyzes all published studies and data relating to AD genetics, and provides weekly updates regarding ongoing attempts to identify novel AD genes.

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Oligomer Collaborative

A collaboration of five of the members of the Research Consortium and a member of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Science Advisory Board hypothesize that an abnormal increase in levels of synaptic Abeta and particularly, Abeta oligomers may lead to synaptic dysfunction, cognitive decline, and eventually dementia. This highly innovative collaborative project will readdresses the amyloid hypothesis by asking which types of Abeta oligomers detrimentally impact synaptic dysfunction and neuronal survival in the brain.

As a result of promising results from the first year of work, the original members of the collaborative were re-funded for a second year in August, 2007. Two more researchers, Sam Gandy of Mount Sinai Medical School and Tae-Wan Kim of Columbia University, joined the Oligomer Collaborative and were also funded in August.

Core Facility for Optimal Management of Amyloid-beta Microdialysis [...] Discovery Program

In collaboration with an anonymous funder, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is supporting development of a facility to measure the concentration of Amyloid-beta in real time in the brain of living, behaving mouse models that develop features of AD. The model enables screening for drugs that lower Amyloid-beta directly in the brain in relatively high throughput.

Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), National Institutes of Aging

Cure Alzheimer's Fund is part of a funding consortium supporting collaborative biomarker investigation of the elevation of Tau and decreased concentrations of Amyloid beta 42 in the Central Spinal Fluid as evidence of the presence of the Alzheimer's disease pathology.

Information on other research projects funded by Cure Alzheimer's Fund can be found at Cure Alzheimer's Fund's Research Page.

Programs

Cure Alzheimer's Fund conducts an In Memory Program, which allows family members to donate money in the name of a loved one afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.

Board of Directors

  • 'Jeffrey L. Morby,Chairman of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund Board of Directors, Founding Board Member,' Chairman of the Morby Family Charitable Foundation, Director of the Andrew and Velda Morby Educational Foundation
  • Dr. John S. Lazo, Professor and Chair in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine: Co-director of the Molecular Therapeutics/[...] Discovery Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
  • 'Henry F. McCance,Founding Board Member,' Chairman of the Board and President of Greylock Management Corporation and General Partner in a variety of Greylock private, limited partnerships for equity investments
  • 'Jacqueline C. Morby,Founding Board Member,' Managing Director of TA Associates from 1982 to 2002 and served on the firm's Executive Committee from 1988 to 2001
  • 'Phyllis Rappaport,Founding Board Member,' Chair of the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation and a director of New Boston Fund, Inc.
  • Dr. William E. Trueheart, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Pittsburgh Foundation
  • Timothy W. Armour, President and CEO of Cure Alzheimer's Fund

Research Consortium

  • Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience), Harvard Medical School.
  • Sam Gandy, M.D., Ph.D., Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York Sinai Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and Chair, National Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the Alzheimer’s Association.
  • Charles Glabe, Ph.D., University of California at Irvine Professor, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, School of Biological Sciences.
  • David Michael Holtzman, M.D., Washington University, St. Louis The Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor of Neurology and head of the Department of Neurology; Charlotte and Paul Hagemann Professor of Neurology and Molecular Biology and Pharmacology; the Associate Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; a member of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders.
  • M. Ilyas Kamboh, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh Professor and Acting Chair, Department of Human Genetics, Graduate School of Public Health.
  • Virginia M.-Y. Lee, Ph.D. M.B.A., University of Pennsylvania The John H. Ware III Professor in Alzheimer's Research, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease.
  • John C. Mazziotta, M.D., Ph.D., UCLA School of Medicine Chair, Department of Neurology; Directors of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center; Associate Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute; Frances Stark Chair of Neurology; Pierson-Lovelace Investigator; Professor of Neurology, Radiological Sciences and Pharmacology, Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.
  • Sangram S. Sisodia, Ph.D., University of Chicago Thomas A. Reynolds Sr. Family Professor of Neurosciences.

Scientific Advisory Board

Members of the Scientific Advisory Board are invited, independent of the Research Consortium, to provide advice and counsel to the Board of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund regarding the overall scientific soundness of the Research Consortium's approach to scientific discovery (roadmap and other initiatives) and the consistency of grant disbursement policy with criteria approved by the Board for project selection.

  • John S. Lazo, Ph.D., Chair, Cure Alzheimer's Fund Scientific Advisory Board, Allegheny Foundation Professor and Director of the Fiske [...] Discovery Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Co-Director of Molecular Therapeutics/[...] Discovery Program, Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
  • Caleb Finch, Ph.D, Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California
  • Paul Greengard, Ph.D., Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, 2000; Head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience; Vincent Astor Professor, The Rockefeller University
  • Marsel Mesulam, M.D., director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center and also serves as the Ruth and Evelyn Dunbar Distinguished Professor at Northwestern University

See also

  • Alzheimer's disease
  • Dementia
  • Health
  • Medical Research
  • Amyloid beta
  • Medical genetics