TIME (7/17, Park) reports Bill Gates has pledged to dedicate funding to an award of “more than $30 million to the Diagnostics Accelerator, a project with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), that will focus on creating new strategies for diagnosing” Alzheimer’s disease. Gates said the goal is to spur “developments of a ‘real product for real patients’ by the medical community.”
Medscape (7/17, Brooks, Subscription Publication) reports Gates is joined by Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) co-founder Leonard Lauder and “other philanthropists, including the Dolby family and the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation.” The coalition aims to “develop novel biomarkers” for an Alzheimer’s disease and dementia diagnostic test.
Reuters (7/17, Steenhuysen) reports the investment will be awarded over three years, and Gates’ pledge “follows an announcement in November of [his] personal investment of $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund.” Reuters notes that the US FDA “has said that it would consider Alzheimer’s drug trials based on biological markers rather than clinical symptoms, paving the way for drugs to be tested far earlier in the disease process.”
Forbes (7/17, Tindera) and a Bloomberg News (7/17) online video also offer coverage.
Related Links:
— “It’s Nearly Impossible to Diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease in Living People. Bill Gates Wants to Change That, “Alicia Park, TIME Health., July 17, 2018.