What the Experts Say

Alzheimer’s Scientists Roundtable Memo

December 4, 2009

There is a great deal to be done, but specific goals are being implemented to turn ideas into actions. Participants: Dr. Steve DeKosky, Dr. Zaven Khachaturian, Dr. Ronald Petersen, Dr. Stan Prusiner, Dr. Rachel Schindler and Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi.

Reform of current system:

• Prepare the country for “personalized medicine” or pharmacogenetic approach to ending Alzheimer's disease using early prediction through genetics, imaging, biomarkers, and early prevention with therapies that stop disease process.
• Address the need for primary practitioner education
• Address the need for mandatory screenings as part of well being exams for aging patients to enable early detection and diagnosis
• Reform the regulatory system that hampers innovation and drug discovery processes
• Create Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) Part 2

Need for a new infrastructure accounting for clinical trials, grant proposals and the ever increasing demand for IT to support the influx of new information that will need to be housed and analyzed.

Utilization of Alzheimer’s research as the gateway and roadmap to fundamentally change brain science funding.