UCSB Chancellor's Community Breakfast to Focus on the Alzheimer's Gene

With the aging of nearly 80 million baby boomers, Alzheimer's disease is an impending epidemic that requires a new approach to prevention as well as management of the disease, according to UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist Kenneth Kosik, whose research focuses on understanding the Alzheimer's gene.

Kosik, the Harriman Professor of Neuroscience Research and a practicing physician, will be the speaker at a UCSB Chancellor's Community Breakfast on Thursday, March 10, at 7:30 a.m. in Santa Barbara.

His presentation is titled "Stalking the Alzheimer's Gene."

The UCSB Affiliates event will be held at El Paseo Restaurant, 10 El Paseo, Santa Barbara.

Tickets are $20 per person, and payment must be made in advance.

For reservations, call (805) 893-2877.

It is possible to test people for the Alzheimer's gene, and predict who will get the disease and who will be spared.

The ability to predict who will get the disease raises the possibility of developing clinical trials to find out whether certain drugs and other therapies are effective in delaying the onset of Alzheimer's in those who have the gene.

Kosik's research was recently featured in "Filling the Blank," a documentary produced by Cable News Network that followed him and other scientists as they tracked the history of Alzheimer's disease in an extended family in Colombia.

Members of the family have passed the Alzheimer's gene from generation to generation.

The distinguished scientist is co-author of "The Alzheimer's Solution: How Today's Care is Failing Millions and How We can Do Better."

He is co-director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB and founder of the center for Cognitive Fitness & Innovative Therapies in Santa Barbara.