--- title: Sen. Roger Wicker: We Need to Find a Cure by 2025 description: How we can work toward a cure by 2025 canonical: https://time.com/4362760/sen-roger-wicker-its-time-for-the-alzheimers-moonshot/ author: Sen. Roger F. Wicker article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-09T16:05:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:28.162Z article:section: Ideas og:title: It's Time for the Alzheimer's Moonshot og:description: How we can work toward a cure by 2025 og:url: https://time.com/4362760/sen-roger-wicker-its-time-for-the-alzheimers-moonshot/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: It's Time for the Alzheimer's Moonshot twitter:description: How we can work toward a cure by 2025 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Sen. Roger Wicker: It’s Time for the Alzheimer’s Moonshot > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Alzheimer's Researcher Rudolph Tanzi on Why he's Optimistic [Watch (HLS stream): Alzheimer's Researcher Rudolph Tanzi on Why he's Optimistic](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Ebl6dMCj.m3u8) (3:53)  _Published 2015-08-26. Tanzi is a pioneer in the field of Alzheimer's research, and has spent most of his career studying a disease that plagues 5.3 million Americans every year._ by [Sen. Roger F. Wicker](https://time.com/author/sen-roger-f-wicker/) ## Sen. Roger F. Wicker Jun 9, 2016 4:05 PM UTC by [Sen. Roger F. Wicker](https://time.com/author/sen-roger-f-wicker/) ## Sen. Roger F. Wicker Jun 9, 2016 4:05 PM UTC Imagine if a child born today learned about [Alzheimer’s](http://time.com/tag/alzheimers/) in a history book rather than in a health class. Or if that child never had to watch a loved one suffer from this terrible disease. These are not far-fetched notions. Americans have consistently defied extraordinary odds to achieve the seemingly impossible. Finding a cure for Alzheimer’s should be no different. Alzheimer’s was discovered more than a century ago, and we have yet to slow or prevent this incredibly complex and confounding disease. But we owe it to the more than five million Americans living with Alzheimer’s to keep trying. We owe it to the families who are suffering alongside their loved ones. We owe it to the future generations who should never have to bear the burden of Alzheimer’s or lose the memories it steals. I introduced [the EUREKA Act](http://www.wicker.senate.gov/public/%5Fcache/files/d9ae4c07-389c-4099-8e81-e6ed2086f07b/eureka-summary.pdf) last year, which stands for “Ensuring Useful Research Expenditures is Key for Alzheimer’s” and would establish prize competitions for major research breakthroughs in hopes of sparking a more innovative and competitive approach to treating and eventually curing Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Prizes need funding, but this bill does not ask taxpayers to give more dollars to Alzheimer’s or take away from current research initiatives. Instead, we pay only for success. Specifically, the EUREKA Act would run parallel to federal research. It would encourage public-private partnerships that could flourish and put the best minds together for reaching important milestones, like the identification of Alzheimer’s biomarkers or the development of methods to detect Alzheimer’s earlier in patients. Congress has reinvigorated the fight against devastating diseases, like Alzheimer’s, with a [21st Century Cures Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/6/text) passed by the House of Representatives and a similar proposal awaiting floor consideration in the Senate. These efforts to transform health care and alleviate suffering are ideas that members from every political party can rally around. The EUREKA Act has already earned support from nearly half of the Senate—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. At the same time, breakthroughs in health care could alleviate major strains on the federal budget and the future of government spending, particularly with the rise of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Alzheimer’s is the most expensive disease in the country, accounting for one in five Medicare dollars. These costs are only expected to increase—topping $1 trillion annually by 2050. I hope we can avoid having to spend $1 trillion and instead find effective ways to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s by 2025—a goal established by the [National Alzheimer’s Project Act](https://aspe.hhs.gov/national-alzheimers-project-act), signed into law in 2011\. Prize competitions under the EUREKA Act would offer an alternate strategy to meet this goal. These competitions are also likely to spawn additional investments in research and development. For example, more than $100 million was spent in pursuit of a recent $10 million prize for advancements in spaceflight. Nearly a century ago, when Charles Lindbergh flew a nonstop flight from New York to Paris, the $25,000 awarded to him and his _Spirit of St. Louis_ ultimately laid the groundwork for today’s multibillion aviation industry. Curing Alzheimer’s is our charge for the 21st century. American ingenuity has never shied away from opportunities to make a remarkable difference in people’s lives. Unleashing the power of competition and innovation—finding our “eureka” moment—is a key step toward this success. ## Transcript When you realize you've found a new gene, or you've found a defect in a gene you've been searching for, there's this moment in time where there's this incredible amount of satisfaction. And then you go to bed, and you know that at least for that evening, you're the only person in the universe to have discovered this amazing thing. They might have the chance to help billions of people now and long after you're gone. So it's really, it's hard to describe a feeling like it. We were the first ones to find the disease gene using genetics, back in the early 80's. Our lab equipment catalog was basically Kmart. Because nobody sold anything yet we had to build it all. For my student thesis, I decided I wanted to build the first end to end map of a chromosome. It was the first time that was gonna be possible. And I'd been working on that gene and other genes like it ever since trying to come up with novel therapies for the disease. I have Alzheimer's disease. Early onset. I got to talk a little bit to Julianne Moore, who was a Time 100 honoree at the gala. And I told her, I said, the mutation you had in the movie, I discovered. That was the gene mutation you had in the movie was actually discovered by our lab. [ MUSIC ] Between 1906 and 1986, We had no idea what caused the pathology. So people would look in the brains of patients after they died; See the plaques, the tangles, the evidence, the information and then have to guess what happened to this brain. And it was the equivalent really of aliens coming down from space and they want to understand the game of football and say" Well, wow what happened here "? They see some grass dug up and... Crumbled up sheet of paper where they get a little bit more evidence of what happened. There's no footballs in sight. There are no players in sight. For decades, that was the equivalent of how we were trying to figure out Alzheimer's. Then in the late 80s when we and others found the first Alzheimer's genes, now we had the real physical targets. We said, this is what's going on. Here's the gene that makes the amyloid. Here are the mutations that make everything go wrong. And so now for the first time, we had hard evidence from genes and proteins that said exactly what was happening before the pathology. [ MUSIC ] Alzheimer's disease affects 50 % of people over 85. Life span right now is 80. If we don't throw more money into this disease, There's a 50 % chance you're gonna get this disease in your lifetime cuz you're probably gonna reach 85. We know so much about this disease. We now know of 2 or 3 dozen different genes beyond the first 4 we found in the 80s and 90s that cause this disease or are predisposed to it. But the funding is what limits how much we can do. We have enough funding to do about five percent of our to- do list of equally important tasks. You look at cancer, AIDs, heart disease. They get twelve billion, ten billion, eight billion. six billion dollars from the government and you see in the incidents of these diseases all go down as a result. Alzheimer's last year got a half a billion Yeah. I always teach my students and trainees, think about what science is going like 50 or 100 years from now and make it your goal to come up with something that lasts 50 years and doesn't go away. Your role as a scientist when you go into the lab is not to prove it but to disprove it. If you go in the lab, And try to crush your hypothesis, kill it, and then see what little thread survives. And then use that to come up with the next idea. Over your lifetime, you're gonna build a little tapestry. If it hangs on in 50 years from now, it's still part of the [ UNKNOWN ] tapestry, you've done more than most. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4362760/sen-roger-wicker-its-time-for-the-alzheimers-moonshot/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4362760/sen-roger-wicker-its-time-for-the-alzheimers-moonshot/"},"headline":"Sen. Roger Wicker: It’s Time for the Alzheimer’s Moonshot","datePublished":"2016-06-09T16:05:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:55:28.162Z","description":"How we can work toward a cure by 2025","url":"https://time.com/4362760/sen-roger-wicker-its-time-for-the-alzheimers-moonshot/","keywords":["health","Alzheimer's"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sen. Roger F. 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