Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing an amendment to his 2021 executive state budget to establish the SUNY Curing Alzheimer’s Health Consortium.
The Consortium would map genetics of one million people suffering from or at risk for Alzheimer’s over the course of five years. Special counsel and senior advisor to the governor, Elizabeth Garvey says private providers would partner with the SUNY system to conduct research.
“We’re going to leverage distinct funding through the Life Sciences initiative with ESD to create a funding stream to create that consortium of data and then we will work with SUNY research institutions as well as our other research institutions across the state to develop treatment and therapies to treat and eventually cure Alzheimer’s disease.”
Twenty million dollars from the Empire State Development Life Science Initiative would fund phase one of the project, recruiting 200,000 people for genetic testing. New York's Department of Health estimates 390,000 individuals in New York had Alzheimer's disease in 2017, a figure expected to increase to 460,000 by 2025.
If approved, the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences would take part in the research.