Looking Ahead - Texas’ Investment in Alzheimer Research

When Texas lawmakers meet this spring to decide state spending for the next two years, it is critical that a priority be placed on sustaining Texas’ momentum in Alzheimer research to meet one of the largest public health challenges facing our state and nation.  At a time when some 300,000 Texans and their families are struggling with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Texas ranks third in the nation in AD cases, there is reason for optimism about the future of Alzheimer research in Texas.

The State of Texas made history in 2005 when it provided the first statewide funding for AD research to the Texas Alzheimer’s Research Consortium (TARC) - a working partnership between top Alzheimer researchers at major medical research institutions in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Lubbock.  The Consortium recently added a new partner, The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, and will seek state funding in 2009 to aggressively expand its Alzheimer research effort to South Texas.

The original four TARC institutions, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and University of North Texas Health Science Center, have wasted no time in putting state dollars to work to meet the AD challenge.  Currently, the TARC is investigating possible links between Alzheimer’s and diabetes, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, stroke, obesity and depression.  Already, the TARC has recruited almost 800 Texans for AD research, including Alzheimer patients and volunteers with normal cognition to act as a healthy control group.

The Consortium is conducting clinical, psychometric, genetic and biomarker tests on AD research volunteers using uniform data-collection methods across institutions, with follow-up testing conducted annually.  These examinations are offered free of charge, and volunteers receive a $100 stipend to defray travel costs.  The TARC is storing its valuable data in a new centralized Texas Alzheimer’s DataBank and is banking blood tissue and DNA samples for future AD research in the state’s first AD bio-bank.

Today, the State of Texas is already reaping “four-star” benefits from its almost four-year investment of $5.9 million in the Consortium:

• Advances in detection.  TARC researchers are moving closer to developing a lower cost, easy-to-administer test to determine if a patient has Alzheimer’s disease, which now can only be diagnosed after a lengthy, costly clinical evaluation.
• Potential to predict AD risk.  The fact that the TARC simultaneously follows healthy elderly (who do not have Alzheimer’s disease) side by side with AD subjects, collecting valuable genetic and biomarker data on both groups will help identify a patient’s risk profile for developing the disease.  With such a profile, physicians can initiate therapies early when they have the greatest impact.
• Better tracking of Alzheimer progression.  A leading national research journal has published TARC’s findings documenting a simpler, more accurate way to identify smaller incremental changes in dementia progression.  With expanded testing, this approach may make it possible to differentiate between Mild Cognitive Impairment and very early Alzheimer's disease, enabling earlier treatments to slow progression and delay AD onset.
• Best in personalized medicine.  Advances in the potential to predict AD risk, to detect the disease and to track AD progression will help the TARC deliver on its ultimate promise, the development of new therapies and treatments that, one day, can be modified to address an individual patient’s Alzheimer profile defined by specific genetic and blood biomarker mapping.

Eradicating Alzheimer’s disease is a long-range goal, but today the best minds in AD research in Texas are united in an aggressive, coordinated effort to meet that challenge.

For more information about TARC’s research efforts and to find out how you can volunteer to participate in cutting edge studies, visit the Consortium’s website.