Bill Gates Commits $10 Million More for Alzheimer’s Research to ‘Part…

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Hello and happy Monday, readers! I hope you enjoyed your weekend.

Bill Gates is continuing to pour money into Alzheimer’s research efforts. The billionaire philanthropist is funding a new $10 million award for an Alzheimer’s Association program called “Part the Cloud”—a global research program that’s meant to spur what the agency calls “high-risk, high-reward” Alzheimer’s and dementia research, including new drugs, diagnostics, and ways of tracking brain activity.

Gates’ award to Part the Cloud (which is led by fellow philanthropist Mikey Hoag) will add on to $20 million that the Alzheimer’s Association is raising as part of the joint effort. That would, in the span of just one year, double the total research investment in the program over seven years to $60 million.

As the groups explained, Part the Cloud’s focus here is less on late-stage Alzheimer’s drugs that have had a rather abysmal track record for decades; rather, the money will be used to fuel early-stage clinical studies that examine new avenues of tackling dementia.

“The Alzheimer’s Association Part the Cloud program is impressive and accelerating early clinical phases of drug development to slow, stop, and ultimately cure the disease,” said Gates in a statement.

Read on for the day’s news.

Sy Mukherjee

[email protected]

@the_sy_guy

DIGITAL HEALTH

Sometimes, simple tech may be enough to make health care more efficient. Sometimes in the digital health space, it's so easy to get caught up in the big-name, aspirational technology (A.I.! Machine Learning! Robots!) You can forget that, sometimes, simple innovations can have profound effects in and of themselves. Take the example of California health system Eisenhower, which leveraged simple phone- and text-message based interfaces (combined with its mostly elderly patient pools' electronic health records) to slash no-show rates at the doctor's office. This has helped patients keep to their planned appointments while also boosting its annualized net income. (Healthcare IT News)

Medtronic sues Axonics over alleged high-tech neuromodulation tech IP infringement. Medical device giant Medtronic has sued rival Axonics for alleged IP infringement, claiming the latter company's "sacral neuromodulation" technology (recently cleared by the Food and Drug Administration) infringes on Medtronic's proprietary technology. These devices essentially use electrical pulses sent to the lower back and pelvic region in order to control incontinence, and until recently, Medtronic had a virtual stranglehold on the market. Axonics has not yet responded to the lawsuit, and we'll update this post once they do.

INDICATIONS

Trump officially taps Stephen Hahn as next FDA commissioner. President Donald Trump has officially tapped Dr. Stephen Hahn, an oncologist and the chief medical executive at the renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center, to be the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This would be the second consecutive oncologist to take the helm at the agency after interim chief Dr. Ned Sharpless, the former director of the National Cancer Institute. (Dr. Brett Giroir will take up interim responsibilities from Sharpless while the Senate considers Hahn's nomination.) Several prominent public health officials, including former full-time FDA head Dr. Scott Gottlieb, had pushed for Sharpless' permanent appointment.

THE BIG PICTURE

Study: More parents turn to religious exemptions to avoid vaccination. New research published in the journal Pediatrics suggests that an increasing number of parents are turning to "religious exemptions" in order to skirt vaccine requirements for their children. These, unlike the far more rare "personal or philosophical" exemptions, are allowed in 45 states and Washington, D.C. But the growing prevalence has raised questions about whether or not people are simply using the exemptions as an excuse given that nearly all major religions don't actively condemn vaccination—and that is being fueled as part of active anti-vaccination misinformation campaigns across social media. (CNN)