Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D., and Florida Department of Elder Affairs Secretary Michelle Branham visited the McKnight Brain Institute on Monday to announce $4.2 million in funding for statewide research efforts in Alzheimer’s disease.
This year’s Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program awards will support researchers advancing discovery, prevention and treatment in dementia research at eight institutions: the University of Florida; Baptist Health in Jacksonville; Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville; the University of Miami; Mount Sinai Medical Center; University of Central Florida; AdventHealth in Orlando; and Florida Atlantic University.
“The research that’s going to be funded is really diverse — everything from diagnosis to treatment to, really, basic science in terms of understanding the etiology of the disease,” Ladapo said in his announcement of the awards.
Branham said that, with Florida having the second-highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s in the country — nearly 600,000 people currently diagnosed and 1.2 million serving as unpaid caregivers — the Ed and Ethel Moore program positions Florida researchers to be pioneers in the field.
“The research pipelines are more robust and promising than ever,” Branham said. “We have the opportunity, this lightning-in-a-bottle time, to really plug in to the public health arena and bring this to the forefront of America as a public health crisis.”
At the MBI, scientists supported by the Ed and Ethel Moore program are confronting the challenge of Alzheimer’s from many different angles, said MBI Director Jennifer Bizon, Ph.D.
“At the MBI, we believe it’s imperative to address this growing health crisis in our state,” Bizon said. “From early detection to prevention, to clinical trials and translation of discovery, it’ll provide hope for those families that are affected.”
In Florida, she said, patient populations, clinical infrastructure and research expertise allow scientists to tackle Alzheimer’s disease on a nationally meaningful scale — from studies into neuroimaging and blood-based biomarkers for earlier diagnosis to potential therapies that may slow the disease.
“Our UF-led 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center is a consortium of five Florida institutions,” Bizon said. “Now in its 11th year, it has built a robust longitudinal, multimodal data set that can be analyzed with new powerful AI tools.”
Michael Jaffee, M.D., chair of UF’s Department of Neurology, provided specific examples of how the Ed and Ethel Moore awards have advanced research into Alzheimer’s and how these pilot awards have led to a strong return on investment by generating millions more in federal funding.
“Thanks in part to the Ed and Ethel Moore program, UF neuroscience and neuromedicine now rank second in the nation among public universities in NIH funding,” Jaffee said.
“Every day, UF researchers from many departments are moving closer to discovering new ways to treat, slow and ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “Thank you to both the Florida Departments of Health and Elder Affairs for supporting all of us in this journey.”
Three UF projects were named for grants totaling nearly $550,000:
- Franchesca Arias, Ph.D., whose project aims to address critical gaps in research by partnering with older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias as well as community leaders across North Central Florida.
- Lien Nguyen, Ph.D., whose project will study potential effects of a novel genetic mutation and associated buildup of toxic proteins in the brain.
- Yonghui Wu, Ph.D., and Rui Yin, Ph.D., whose project aims to develop innovative computational tools and analytical frameworks to better understand why some Alzheimer’s patients progress rapidly and others slowly, to improve future clinical trial design and interventions.