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Has it touched your life, affected one of your loved ones?
"Alzheimer's is the public health threat of the 21st century," says Maria Carrillo, Director of Medical and Scientific Relations at the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago. Although it's the 6th leading cause of death in the US, and working its way up, "there's so many different avenues of research that are being pursued right now that give us a lot of hope". Like drugs in Phase 3 trials, for example.
Where are they at? They're doing a lot of basic science research. Maria describes how the research is working back in time; they know the end result and they believe the disease begins 20 years prior. Do the math, that means the disease is beginning for many of us right now!
"Probably 95% of our donations come from individuals." So they have quite a marketing challenge and have to keep getting the word out, like: "there are 5.3 million Americans living with this disease today". Last year they donated $26M to fund research, a new high; a lot of it going to new investigators.
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