Researcher Rudolph Tanzi is quoted extensively in Science Magazine‘s recent article concerning the Obama administration’s decision to increase funding for Alzheimer’s disease research. The decision, announced last week, includes an increase of $80 million for research, as well as the reprogramming of $50 million from the National Institutes of Health’s annual budget. As Tanzi stated, “it’s persistence” from the lobbyists that finally has made this disease a national priority.

Richard Hodes, the director for the National Institute on Aging, expects that half of the $50 million from the NIH will go toward genetic research, while the other half will help fund promising grants at research institutions across the country. Though it is unusual for the presidential administration to reallocate any portion of the NIH’s annual $31 billion budget, Hodes explains that the administration has decided the urgency of the Alzheimer’s disease epidemic makes this decision necessary.

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