Senate Approves $2.34 Billion Budget for Alzheimer's Research

The U.S. Senate has approved additional funding for Alzheimer's research, reports Alzforum . Lawmakers stipulated a 2019 fiscal year budget that, if signed into law, would include $2.34 billion for such research, exceeding 2018's research budget by $425 million. The bill also allocates a $2 billion boost in funding for the National Institutes of Health to $39.1 billion. The research budget was part of an overarching $857 billion appropriations bill, which outlined spending for the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said the proposed 2019 budget is far less than the $277 billion in annual U.S. dementia care costs, and the Alzheimer's Association noted these costs include $186 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments. The University of Indiana School of Medicine's Bruce Lamb said the budget proposal tops the $2 billion in annual funding proposed in 2011, when the National Alzheimer's Project Act was first approved and the National Plan was developed. "Given some of the recent disappointments in the AD clinical trials, we likely will need to further increase investments to help speed the process of identifying new drug targets, to improve the drug-discovery pipeline, to redesign clinical trials that target specific ... populations, and to discover lifestyle interventions that slow or prevent dementia," Lamb noted.