The Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expediting Alzheimer's clinical trials, applauds $400 million Congressional increase in Alzheimer's research funding. Under the bipartisan vote, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will receive a $2 billion boost in fiscal year 2017, as it did the previous year. The NIH budget continues to support key areas of research, including Alzheimer's disease. The new budget sets aside an additional $400 million for Alzheimer's research for a total of nearly $1.4 billion, a 40 percent increase.

Currently, more than 80 percent of the NIH budget goes to about 300,000 outside researchers supporting research and jobs concerning a wide variety of diseases. Some of these researchers are part of the Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation Network (GAP-Net). GAP-Net is a collaboration of 51 leading academic and private commercial research institutions working to reduce the cycle time of clinical research and drug development for Alzheimer's disease – bringing therapies to market faster.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's is America's costliest disease. Nearly 5.5 million Americans have the disease. This number could rise to as high as 16 million by 2050. More than 15 million caregivers provide an estimated 18 billion hours of unpaid care every year.

The Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation was launched in 2015 by UsAgainstAlzheimer's and the Global CEO Initiative (CEOi) on Alzheimer's Disease with the vision of creating an integrated global clinical trial network to reduce the time, cost and risk of Alzheimer's disease clinical trials, a critical factor in the pacing of efforts to speed an effective treatment of Alzheimer's disease to those with or at risk of the disease.