Bill Gates is targeting an Alzheimer's cure by donating $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund and another $50 million for startup ventures.
Gates, through his foundation, has given millions to tackle infectious diseases like HIV, malaria, and polio, CNN reported. The Dementia Discovery Fund is a private-public research partnership focused on what drives Alzheimer's disease, like looking at a brain cell's own immune system.
Gates told Reuters he will follow up his Dementia Discovery Fund donation with money for startup ventures working on "less mainstream" approaches to tackling the disease.
"I believe there is a solution," Gates told CNN. "Any type of treatment would be a huge advance from where we are today. … the long-term goal has got to be cure."
Dementia, Alzheimer's most common form, affects close to 50 million people worldwide and is expected to affect more than 131 million by 2050, according to the nonprofit campaign group Alzheimer's Disease International, CNBC noted.
The Dementia Discovery Fund was started in 2015 and involves drug makers GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Biogen Idec and the U.K. government, CNBC said. The fund has invested in at least nine start-up companies investigating potential ways to stop or reverse the biological processes that lead to dementia.
"I first became interested in Alzheimer's because of its costs — both emotional and economic — to families and healthcare systems," Gates said in blog post about his interest in Alzhemier's investment. "The financial burden of the disease is much easier to quantify. A person with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia spends five times more every year out-of-pocket on healthcare than a senior without a neurodegenerative condition.”
"… It's a terrible disease that devastates both those who have it and their loved ones. This is something I know a lot about, because men in my family have suffered from Alzheimer's. I know how awful it is to watch people you love struggle as the disease robs them of their mental capacity, and there is nothing you can do about it. It feels a lot like you're experiencing a gradual death of the person that you knew," Gates said.
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