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Accelerate the cure
for Alzheimer’s disease.
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About the ACT-AD Coalition

ACT-AD is a coalition of national organizations representing patients, providers, caregivers, consumers, older Americans, researchers, employers and health care industries seeking to accelerate development of potential cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

Mission

ACT-AD supports accelerating research for transforming therapies to potentially slow, halt or reverse the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

Goals

ACT-AD seeks:

  • Immediate public and government recognition of Alzheimer’s disease as a debilitating, dehumanizing and life-threatening disease that requires urgent attention.
  • To bring interventional therapies to patients, providers and families in the next decade by making the acceleration of promising Alzheimer’s disease therapies a top national priority.

Objectives

ACT-AD seeks to:

  • Create a sense of urgency in support of bringing AD products to market
  • Obtain public and government recognition of AD as a serious, life threatening epidemic, which will bust the federal budget
  • Accelerate development of safe and efficacious disease modifying therapies in AD

Why ACT-AD Now

The Alzheimer’s Association has issued a warning–

We have 10 years at most to prevent disaster. If we miss that chance, Alzheimer's will bankrupt family and state and federal budgets as up to 14 million baby boomers succumb to the disease. The investment in research is well worth the cost and the payoff will be enormous.1

Under the current regulatory environment, research being performed today cannot reach patients in time to avert this disaster. CNS drugs take, on average, 13 years from initial animal studies of a drug candidate to approval.2 One year delay represents 1/3 of a million patients and their families. While these figures underscore the urgency of seeking more effective therapeutic interventions for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, there are promising treatments being tested that may slow, halt or reverse Alzheimer’s disease.

Currently:

  • Approved AD therapies only address some of the symptoms, not the underlying disease pathology of Alzheimer’s.
  • The lack of national priority placed on Alzheimer’s disease allows for delays in the drug development process.
  • The Alzheimer’s patient and caregiver community have not been engaged or involved in defining acceptable risk for the potential benefit that may come from treatments that have the potential to modify the underlying AD pathology.

ACT-AD is committed to bringing interventional therapies to patients, providers and families in the next decade by making the acceleration of promising Alzheimer’s disease therapies a top national priority. The time is NOW to make sure our voices are heard. Let this be the last generation that suffers without hope from the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

1. http://search.alz.org/Advocacy/priorities/research/overview.asp

2. Center for the Study of Drug Development, Tufts University. 1995