Joe Caspermeyer, Media Relations Manager & Science Editor
(480) 727-0369 | joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu
August 29, 2007
ASU, Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, host U.S. Representative Harry Mitchell to address Alzheimer’s disease burden
In a press conference hosted at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, United States Representative Harry E. Mitchell (Ariz. – D) made his formal announcement to join the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s disease. The press conference, held Aug. 28, was organized by the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium.
“I believe the best way we can honor life is by investing in science and ethical research,” said Rep. Mitchell. “This Task Force provides me and my colleagues a unique opportunity to thoughtfully engage and support groundbreaking Alzheimer’s research, especially the research being done here in Arizona.”
Biodesign Institute researcher Stephen Albert Johnston (front, left) and Andrey Loskutov (foreground, right) demonstrate a “gene gun” immunological approach aimed at preventing Alzheimer’s disease to U.S. Representative Harry Mitchell (second from front, left) and members of the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium. Mitchell announced his involvement in joining the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s disease at ASU’s Biodesign Institute on Tuesday, August 28.
The Congressional Task Force is a bipartisan panel made up of members of Congress and aimed at focusing national attention on Alzheimer’s disease and the health care crisis it represents.
Mitchell pointed out some of the staggering statistics related to Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, five million Americans are afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and by the year 2050, that number is estimated to grow to 16 million people at a cost of $750 billion a year. Fifty percent of those age 85 and older will develop the disease.
“We have an impending national crisis related to Alzheimer’s disease,” said Stephen Albert Johnston, PhD, director of the Center for Innovations in Medicine at the Biodesign Institute, who spoke at the event. “This crisis is both at the personal level in terms of the people who get the disease, their families and caregivers, but also at the national level because of the economic impact this disease is having and will have. We are only going to solve this problem by collaboration on a larger scale.”
Founded in 1998, the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium (AAC) is a nationally-respected model of collaboration, combining the research and clinical expertise of a synergistic, statewide network of more than 100 researchers from seven world-class institutions, including: Arizona State University, Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, Barrow Neurological Institute, Mayo Clinic Arizona, Sun Health Research Institute, Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the University of Arizona.
ASU’s efforts involve more than a dozen faculty from the Biodesign Institute, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation, Department of Mathematics and Statistics and others working on a spectrum of diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic research projects aimed at easing the burden of Alzheimer’s. Among them are: Heather Bimonte-Nelson, David Coon, Gerald Farin, Stephen Albert Johnston, Colleen Keller, Rosemary Renaut, Michael Sierks, Johannah Uriri-Glover and Evelyn Cesarotti.
The mission of the AAC is to link the state’s resources and its strengths, and to leverage policy changes at the national level, to advance efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Arizona’s strengths include brain imaging, genomics, computer science, clinical and neuropathological research and behavioral neurosciences.
“Arizona, as we all know, is a retirement destination for many senior citizens and so we can expect to incur a disproportionately high burden of the disease in the years to come,” said Richard Caselli, MD, professor and chairman of neurology at Mayo Clinic Arizona. “This is an exciting time for Congressman Mitchell to join this Task Force. We have the nation’s leading statewide collaboration in Alzheimer’s research working together with its member institutions to develop therapies that will stop and, indeed to put an end to Alzheimer’s disease in the shortest time possible.”
To find out more about the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium’s, go to: http://www.azalz.org
