Latest news with #Alzheimer'sDiseaseResearchCenter
Axios
3 days ago
- Health
- Axios
Alzheimer's research at risk as diagnoses rise
More than 7 million American seniors now live with Alzheimer's disease — the highest number ever recorded, according to 2025 data shared in a new Alzheimer's Association report. Why it matters: As Alzheimer's diagnoses rise, the federal funding for medical research that's critical to preventing and treating it is at risk of being cut. State of play: Over 17,300 Californians die from Alzheimer's every year, but addressing cognitive decline early can help stave off the disease. That's especially important with San Diego County's growing senior population — about 16% of residents. Zoom in: The odds of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's is higher in San Diego than many other parts of the country, at least in part because of the local hospital system. That doesn't necessarily mean more people have the disease, but more thorough diagnosing can lead to more cases, better care, new tests and treatments. Between the lines: UC San Diego has the top NIH-funded neuroscience department in the country, and the university's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center is developing potential treatments, monitoring drug safety and running clinical trials aimed at prevention. That federal funding is at risk of being pulled, which center director Jim Brewer has said would "absolutely cut the knees out" and could delay progress in addressing the disease, particularly through clinical trials. The latest: The FDA on Friday cleared the first blood test to help diagnose the disease, which could help with early detection. By the numbers: About 12% of Californians over 65 are living with Alzheimer's, per 2020 data in the report. That's almost 720,000 people. At 15%, Imperial County had the ninth-highest prevalence in the country. Zoom out: The highest rates of seniors with Alzheimer's are in D.C. (16.8%), Maryland (12.9%) and New York (12.7%), according to the association. Nearly two-thirds of all Americans diagnosed with the disease are women, per data cited in the report. UCSD researchers are currently trying to figure out why. Warning signs to watch for in high-risk age groups: Trouble finding the right word. Difficulty judging distances. Misplacing things and struggling to retrace steps. Be smart: Keeping your brain on its toes, so to speak, can help prevent dementia.
NBC News
13-04-2025
- Health
- NBC News
One of the country's leading Alzheimer's projects is in jeopardy
Health news A pause to NIH funding has researchers scrambling for contingency plans at the University of Washington's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. The center's brain bank is preserving more than 4,000 brains for research. By Evan Bush SEATTLE — Andrea Gilbert thought she knew what would happen to her brain. The 79-year-old retired attorney, who has Alzheimer's disease and receives care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, agreed to donate it for research in 2023. She hoped to help scientists unlock the keys to a disease that had left her writing notes to remind herself if she'd already brushed her teeth. The fate of that program is now in limbo because the Trump administration has upended the system that funds biomedical research. 'It's going to go one way or another. I'm not taking it with me,' Gilbert said from a hospital bed as she received an infusion of a drug designed to prevent the disease from worsening. 'I hope it gets used well. But, you know, you can't guarantee anything.' Thousands of grants, including many at public universities and on topics as politically benign as Alzheimer's, have been caught in what critics say is an unprecedented slowdown of the American research system that is threatening to upend universities and halt progress toward medical innovations, treatments and cures. Even the temporary slowdown threatens to hamper or scuttle programs that have been decades in the making — and some of which are also actively treating patients. The National Institutes of Health has been the primary funder of the University of Washington's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) since 1985. The program supports a brain bank that accepts more than 200 donations yearly and is preserving more than 4,000 brains. The center's grant funding, which is waiting for renewal, expires at the end of April. But grant decisions across the nation have slowed to a crawl, according to court filings. The program has focused on unraveling the basic biology of the disease and factors that counter it. It discovered or helped identify three genes in which mutations cause Alzheimer's. The situation has left Gilbert's neurologist, Dr. Thomas Grabowski, confused and scrambling. What will happen to patient care and the brains banked for research at Harborview? 'We've gone through a bunch of contingency planning,' said Grabowski, who is also the director of the ADRC. 'When it starts to look like multiple, multiple, multiple months, then there's not a good answer to your question.' Dr. Dirk Keene, a professor and the director of neuropathology at UW Medicine who leads the brain bank, said if federal funding dries up, he'll go to almost any end to 'honor the gift' of people's donation. 'I'll beg, I'll borrow. I don't think I'll steal, but I'll do whatever I can to find money,' Keene said. Legal battle Universities are reeling. The Trump administration has executed a flurry of research grant terminations at large, private institutions like Johns Hopkins and Princeton University. In a recent court case against NIH, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the administration targeted cuts to grants about topics it disfavors like diversity, LGBTQ issues and gender identity. Among public universities, the University of Washington is one of the hardest hit, and researchers and students have said the fallout from the cuts has upended their careers and forced some to consider leaving the U.S. 'We're going to have a big brain drain in the U.S. of these really talented folks,' said Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, the vice dean of research and graduate education at UW Medicine. 'It's not just a switch that you flip, right? If people move out into another direction with their careers, they often don't come back.' In a statement to NBC News, NIH said it was dedicated to restoring 'gold-standard, evidence-based science.' 'NIH is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities,' the federal agency said. 'As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it's important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans. We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.' A legal battle is ongoing over the cuts and funding pauses, but any permanent resolution is likely months away. The state of Washington is one of 16 that filed a lawsuit against NIH and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleging that the Trump administration has terminated hundreds of grants through 'shoddy justifications' and delayed decisions on billions of dollars in research funding. The attorneys general have asked for a preliminary injunction to quickly restore the flow of funding. A judge is slated to hear arguments in early May. Thousands of grants, millions of dollars The University of Washington is one of the top public universities for biomedical research and a place where basic science discoveries are translated into clinical trials and hospital care. In a court filing, the university said it receives more federal research dollars than any other public university. Many of those dollars go toward UW Medicine, the university's hospital system and its clinical research hub. The university said it had received about 1,220 grants from NIH and about $648 million in funding last fiscal year. But this year, the grant approval process came to a sudden halt. As of April 1, the university said more than 600 grant proposals were waiting for review or stuck at some juncture in that process. Another 12 grants or subgrants have been canceled outright, including one for studying the prevention of chlamydia infections and another about the recovery of sexual assault victims, court documents say. The grant slowdown has forced the university to implement furloughs, plan for layoffs and reduce graduate admissions by 25%-50% for next year, according to the filing. The university has implemented a hiring freeze, and researchers across campus are feeling the effects. David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for his research on protein design. But Baker, who is the director of the Institute for Protein Design, said about 15 of his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers within his group are now seeking positions outside the U.S. 'There's so many amazing people who want to come in, and we can't take them,' Baker said. 'The Nobel Prize was just a little blip. But things have gotten quite bleak.' Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio, an infectious disease researcher and physician at UW Medicine and a partner institute called the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, cut her own salary down to 60%, choosing to distribute the rest among junior scientists and other staffers within her 15-person clinical research group. 'Right now, due to the funding cuts, we are unable to enroll any more participants into federally funded studies, or start new studies, or do really any new work,' said Bender Ignacio, who said she was concerned for patients enrolled in HIV clinical trials. 'We often are conducting research with people who are in clinical care and they're receiving state-of-the-art treatments as part of research.' The pipeline For Alzheimer's disease, research breakthroughs are increasingly being evaluated in clinics, which means disruptions to funding could have an effect on patient care. Gilbert, who is chatty and eager to laugh, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in late 2023, soon after lecanemab, a new therapy designed to slow the disease's progress, became available. In December 2023, Gilbert was one of the first patients at Harborview Medical Center to receive a dose of lecanemab, the first disease-modifying drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use against Alzheimer's in people with mild cognitive impairment. Gilbert visits the hospital, part of the UW Medicine system, twice a month for an infusion of the drug, which is designed to clear amyloid protein, one driver of Alzheimer's disease, from her brain. 'They said, 'This is not going to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's, but hopefully it will slow it down,'' said Chris Gilbert, her son. 'All things considered, she's doing pretty well. She still lives home alone, independently.' On a sunny April morning in Seattle, Andrea completed her 36th infusion, greeting nurses and fellow patients as if they were old friends. Andrea and Chris Gilbert said they believed the drug, and her excellent care at Harborview, had prevented her symptoms from worsening. They noted that since her diagnosis, Andrea had increased her score by one point on a 30-question cognitive assessment used to evaluate Alzheimer's patients. Grabowski, the neurologist, said other, newer Alzheimer's drugs are in the pipeline, in part because of NIH's commitment to addressing the disease. 'They were all at some point funded by NIH in the development stages, preclinical work,' Grabowski said. 'So, if you took away NIH funding altogether, you would find this whole pipeline to therapy kind of drying up.' But over the past few months, Grabowski said he's grown increasingly worried about his center's funding. Grabowski said the center had applied for a grant renewal of $15 million in direct costs over the next five years, but he was uncertain if, or when, the funding might be approved. He said the center receives roughly 85% of its funding from the federal government. It's not uncommon for NIH to renew a grant after it expires, but Grabowski said 'unprecedented uncertainty' at NIH has left him largely in the dark about his center's future. When the Trump administration took office, it temporarily paused communications from health agencies, including scientific advisory council meetings in which grants are reviewed. Grabowski said he'd received little communication from NIH about his 940-page application until late March, when staffers asked for a revised grant application to address DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. He worries about the fate of the center and its long-term studies, including one that is following 450 people, including Gilbert, until death. Ideally, each participant will receive a yearly evaluation of their health and memory loss until their autopsy and brain donation. On shaky ground As researchers search for new treatments, the brain bank at Harborview Medical Center is an invaluable resource. Last year, it shared about 11,000 tissue samples with researchers. It's a busy operation. Teams are on call around the clock to retrieve brains within 24 hours after a donor's death. Each year, between 200 and 240 people donate their brains for research at Harborview. Once collected, a brain is dissected and a portion is frozen in a freezer that's minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The remainder is sliced into thin samples and analyzed with a microscope for abnormalities. 'We have brains that were donated 40 years ago that we still use very frequently,' Keene said. In addition to the concern about the ADRC, Keene said another federal NIH grant that supports research to find the brain cells most vulnerable to disease expired at the end March. That grant, which totals nearly $7 million in direct costs for several projects, also helps to fund the brain bank. 'If all of our funding collapses, the most important thing is being able to still honor the commitment that we've made to these people,' Keene said. 'That's our priority, is to get these brains in the lab and preserved, and they can sit for 10 years if that's when the funding comes back.' Chris Gilbert said he didn't understand how research into Alzheimer's could be on such shaky ground. 'Drugs like Leqembi give people promise and hope, and it's the same thing with the brain tissue study,' Gilbert said, referring to a brand name of lecanemab. 'All those things contribute to finding cures and ways to prevent this and treat it. The fact that they're cutting these things or putting them in limbo is really upsetting, and you know, I feel like they're doing surgery with a chainsaw at the federal level.' The University of Washington hosts one of 35 Alzheimer's research centers funded by the the National Institute on Aging. The centers operate as part of a cohesive network and share data. Grabowski said 14 centers are seeking grant renewals this year. 'Many of us are in the same boat' as the University of Washington, said Dr. Helena Chui, the principal investigator at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Southern California. 'It's a very strong network, and it would be easy to wreck, but it took years to build.' Evan Bush Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Costs of Research Funding Delays at NIH
The Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) at the University of Pittsburgh is one of the country's hubs for researchers working to improve detection and treatment for a disease that afflicts nearly 7 million Americans. Anne Cohen—an ADRC faculty member who leads work on neuroimaging and identifying biomarkers of Alzheimer's in patients—uses positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of research participants' brains to work on the early detection of the disease before cognitive symptoms emerge. Cohen has been busy over the last two months, not with her own research, but trying to keep the ARDC open. The ADRC, like the other 35 Alzheimer's research centers across the country, relies on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cohen had counted on the arrival of funding from a five-year grant renewal submitted in June to the National Institute on Aging that was favorably evaluated, or 'scored,' in the fall by a peer review committee. 'The expectation was that we would continue to operate as our center always has,' Cohen told The Dispatch. But the federal dollars never came through, and Cohen and her colleagues are scrambling to retain staff while operating with less than a third of their normal budget—the center's budget is typically $300,000 a month but is now operating at $115,000 a month from donated funds. The center has had to stop all its PET imaging, which runs about $6,000 per participant. 'Often our imaging contributes to the science; in symptomatic individuals, it can provide clarity and information about diagnosis, so those downstream effects of losing the ability to do this imaging on our participants has really been a challenge,' Cohen said. After President Donald Trump took office in January, the NIH stopped meetings of review committees and the institutes' advisory councils—the bodies responsible for the final approval of new research proposals and the extension of existing grants. Why the meetings were canceled and how long it would be before they were rescheduled has been unclear amid weeks of turmoil at NIH that have included the dismissal of probationary employees and high-profile resignations. The first advisory council meeting notice since the halt was published in the Federal Register on Thursday. As the delay dragged on, the NIH research funding pipeline largely ground to a halt, and biomedical labs are now running out of money to continue their work and pay researchers' salaries. The NIH, apparently working with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has canceled grants for projects officials deemed too closely tied to woke ideology and DEI efforts. (The DOGE X account periodically posts lists of individual grants canceled as part of this campaign.) In February, Trump administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services directed NIH to cut billions in research dollars by imposing a cap on research grants' indirect costs—overhead like facilities and administrative expenses—but a federal court temporarily blocked the move earlier this month. In justifying the grant cancellations and the cost cap, the administration argued its actions would result in more money being spent on truly beneficial medical research rather than woke boondoggles or bureaucratic bloat. 'The United States should have the best medical research in the world,' the NIH Office of the Director said in its February memo outlining the rate cut. 'It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.' But even as the administration put forward these arguments—something medical researchers and some former NIH officials strongly disagreed with—the canceling of advisory council meetings has frozen a reported $1.5 billion in research funds. The submitted grants were sought for all kinds of biomedical research, supporting not just indirect costs but all research costs and enabling work to continue on everything from Alzheimer's disease to cancer treatments. Although federal courts have blocked Trump officials from freezing federal funds, the administration has been able to cut off the funding pipeline using a bureaucratic workaround. New grants and proposals for renewed funding of ongoing research must be reviewed by study sections and approved by advisory councils. The study sections are made up of scientists from around the country and provide peer review for grant proposals, scoring each submission, and delivering written feedback to the researchers. After study section review, the top-scoring grants move forward to the appropriate advisory council, which provides a secondary review and final approval of the grants. Jeremy Berg, an associate senior vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School and the former director of the National Institute of General Medicine Science, told The Dispatch that grants are legally required to be approved by the councils or else the money can't go out the door. But in order for both the study sections and the councils to meet, notices of the meetings have to be posted in the Federal Register in accordance with legal requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Trump administration blocked the postings for the meetings. Berg said that based on his analysis of funding disbursement in February compared to the same period last year, the administration also has slow-walked an additional $1.8 billion in money for current grants that do not need study section or council reviews but are paid in annual installments and reviewed administratively each year to ensure compliance with grant conditions. The delay in disbursements is reportedly the result of confusion and fear among NIH staff about Trump officials' directives potentially conflicting with court orders. Michael Lauer, the deputy director of the NIH office responsible for grant funding, was seemingly forced out of the agency in February the day after he sent a memo to NIH staff members directing them to resume grant disbursements. 'The fact that study sections were stopped dead in their tracks and not rescheduled puts the lie to the argument that it's all being done in the name of more money for science,' Evan Morris, a radiology and biomedical imaging professor at Yale School of Medicine, told The Dispatch. 'There ain't no money coming right now.' Late last month, notices for study section meetings began to appear again in the Federal Register, and a new batch of them went up this week, along with the notice for a meeting of the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health that went up Thursday. Normally, advisory councils consider grants during three approval cycles each year, typically around February, May, and September. At this point, the delay has likely consumed two approval cycles, meaning the funding gap for already scored projects will continue for months—even if all council approvals resumed immediately—and will extend even longer for proposals yet to be reviewed by study sections. It's common for proposals to receive promising scores from study sections but also feedback for improvement, requiring researchers to resubmit their proposals during the next review cycle. From a project's conception to the actual disbursement of funds is almost always more than a year and frequently two years when accounting for resubmissions. 'We've made the assumption that even if everything got back on track tomorrow, we probably would not see funds until early summer, probably late May, early June,' Cohen told The Dispatch of the ADRC grant her center submitted last summer. Cohen said the ADRC has shifted resources from research to staff retention, noting that if highly skilled staff members left, decades of institutional knowledge would leave with them. Many biomedical researchers, even faculty at universities, rely on federal grants for their salaries. She also emphasized the need to continue serving Alzheimer's research participants. 'These relationships have been built over almost 40 years, and stepping away from those I view as a breach of trust with the communities that we've committed to working with,' Cohen said. The funding delay has severely disrupted ongoing research, but it also has stunted the progress of promising new research projects. Morris, the Yale researcher, is still waiting for a study section review of a grant proposal to expand a pilot study on the relationship between sleep deprivation and substance abuse. Morris explained that his research team believes they have observed, for the first time, a direct effect of poor sleep on the dopamine system. He said that if the findings are confirmed, they could have huge implications for everyone from psychiatrists to night shift workers to air traffic controllers. 'But it's a pilot study,' he added. 'It was six men and six women, and it needs to be expanded.' But with the NIH delay, he's lost one researcher out of a team of four working directly on the project because he couldn't guarantee a salary and another over a visa complication. There's a limited pool of people who have the expertise to conduct the research, Morris explained. 'It's sort of like I have the World Series Red Sox from 2007 or 2018,' he said, 'and then to find out that the whole team has been broken apart.' Justin Perry, an immunologist and cancer biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in New York, is also experiencing disruption in work on a potential new treatment for breast cancer. Perry and his colleagues are trying to raise funds for a clinical trial on a treatment that could reprogram the body's immune cells to use fructose to fight cancerous tumors. They submitted an NIH grant proposal for the trial that has yet to be reviewed. Perry also said that in the absence of NIH support, private investors have been reluctant to take on the financial risk of making up the funding gap, particularly given current broader economic uncertainty. 'I'm not going to sit here and say this is going to cost lives, because you just can't prove that,' Perry said, noting his comments don't necessarily represent the views of MSK. 'It's impossible to know if my work or my colleagues' work is going to lead to the next treatment for breast cancer, but I do think that there are some significant dominoes that are falling in a bad way that we can't rectify.' Researchers hope the delay will soon come to an end with the confirmation of Trump's nominee for NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. He was asked during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing earlier this month if he'd resume the advisory council meetings as soon as he's confirmed. 'Yes, if I'm confirmed, I want those advisory councils, all of that to go,' said Bhattacharya, who cleared the committee vote and is headed for a vote in the full Senate. But even if the grant pipeline restarts, the damage done to the rising generation of biomedical researchers could prove enduring. Research universities across the country are slashing their graduate student admissions in reaction to both the funding delay and the uncertainty around future federal support with the administration's move to cap indirect costs. Last week, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School announced it would rescind all admissions offers to its biomedical science doctoral program for the 2025-26 academic year. Cohen told The Dispatch one of her biggest concerns is the harm that could be done to the next generation of Alzheimer's researchers as early-career scientists, many of whom have had their first grant submissions bogged down by the delay, are now considering leaving the research sector. 'It's going to be a huge loss to science to see these folks go do other things,' she said. 'I'm sure they will be fantastic at those other things, but it will be a loss to our field.' The U.S. is currently the global leader in biomedical research, but geopolitical adversaries like China are close behind. 'With the current turmoil, China could surpass the U.S. in the near future, and we may be buying advanced medicines and other scientific-research-intensive products from Chinese companies in the not too distant future,' David Baker, a University of Washington biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year, told the Wall Street Journal. It's unclear what policy goals a broad rollback in research funding would further aside from some relatively small reductions in federal spending. But even on cost savings grounds, it's far from clear that slashing federal support would result in a net benefit, considering the volume of commercial patents and the economic value produced by NIH-funded research—in fiscal year 2024, $37 billion in NIH funding resulted in $94 billion in downstream economic activity. There are good-faith arguments to be made about reforms to the NIH or the merits of specific research priorities—Bhattacharya would like to see the NIH tackle more ambitious, riskier research goals, for example. But the suspension of advisory council meetings combined with the Trump administration's other efforts targeting medical research generally have thrown the system into chaos. 'We have terrible treatments for breast cancer,' Perry told The Dispatch. 'It's the deadliest cancer in women, and yet, this all is affecting our ability to do that [research.]' 'Whenever I go home to Alaska and people learn what I do,' he added, 'this is the thing that everyone wants the NIH to do.'
