January 1, 2007 - Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative Launch
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative was launched in 2007 as a major charitable beneficiary of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation – to fight Alzheimer’s – a fatal, degenerative, neurological disease that has no cure. The Initiative is a philanthropic, not for-profit 501(c)(3), committed to providing catalyst funding to innovative new projects that advance awareness, diagnosis and research in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative, underwritten by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation with contributions in excess of $4.8 million, have been made to support groundbreaking awareness programs and next generation research in early diagnostics. “Not unlike cancer, the Geoffrey Beene Foundation’s lead philanthropic cause, most researchers agree that the greatest potential to stop Alzheimer’s lies in the earliest stages of the disease, which is why we fund translational research. Innovative Challenges help to support that mission,” said Tom Hutton, the Trustee and Chief Executive Officer of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation and President and Chief Executive Officer of Geoffrey Beene, LLC. “We must redefine the solutions process and free the greatest minds of our time to do the work and to help save and improve lives.”
The Geoffrey Beene Alzheimer’s Initiative’s mission is engaging a new generation of innovation. Even though experts now widely agree that early stages of Alzheimer’s hold the key to treatment and prevention, individuals with early Alzheimer’s have always been difficult to identify and costly to study in traditional clinical trial-based research. As a result, the scientific community has only begun to understand initial, pre-symptomatic disease progression and potential therapeutic options. The Geoffrey Beene Alzheimer’s Initiative focuses on this relatively new field of research.