Huntsville, Ala. — The HudsonAlpha Foundation has established the Memory and Mobility (M&M) Fund for neurological disease research. The announcement was made at the sold-out Spring Benefit Thursday night.
The M&M fund will support HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology’s current and future neurological disease research. The first project will be to sequence the genomes of 1,500 patients with Alzheimer and Alzheimer-related dementia.
“We have an unprecedented opportunity to access this data set and make new genomic discoveries in Alzheimer disease, which in turn will inform us about other neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Parkinson, and Huntington. These neurological diseases are all connected. Studying one of them will advance our understanding and knowledge of them all,” said Rick Myers, PhD, HudsonAlpha president and science director. 
“We chose the name Memory and Mobility Fund because these diseases rob people of their memories or their mobility,” said Lynne Berry, executive director of the HudsonAlpha Foundation. “Using genomic science, HudsonAlpha researchers can find answers that will result in an improved quality of life for patients and their families.”
To learn more and support the M&M Fund, click here.
About HudsonAlpha: HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is a nonprofit institute dedicated to innovating in the field of genomic technology and sciences across a spectrum of biological challenges. Founded in 2008, its mission is four-fold: sparking scientific discoveries that can impact human health and well-being; bringing genomic medicine into clinical care; fostering life sciences entrepreneurship and business growth; and encouraging the creation of a genomics-literate workforce and society. The HudsonAlpha biotechnology campus consists of 152 acres nestled within Cummings Research Park, the nation’s second largest research park. Designed to be a hothouse of biotech economic development, HudsonAlpha’s state-of-the-art facilities co-locate nonprofit scientific researchers with entrepreneurs and educators. The relationships formed on the HudsonAlpha campus encourage collaborations that produce advances in medicine and agriculture. Under the leadership of Dr. Richard M. Myers, a key collaborator on the Human Genome Project, HudsonAlpha has become a national and international leader in genetics and genomics research and biotech education, and includes 32 diverse biotech companies on campus. To learn more about HudsonAlpha, visit: http://hudsonalpha.org/.
Media Contact:
Margetta Thomas
mthomas@hudsonalpha.org
256-327-0425
