Help Us End Alzheimer's Disease

What Is Neurodegeneration?

Neurodegeneration describes the progressive loss of structure and function in neurons, including their eventual death. Because most neurons in the adult brain do not regenerate, this damage accumulates gradually over decades and becomes clinically apparent as memory loss, impaired movement, or cognitive decline. Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative condition, but the same underlying biology contributes to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and several other disorders of aging.

The Maher Laboratory studies one of the central drivers of this process, a form of oxidative, iron-dependent cell death that Dr. Pamela Maher's team first described and named oxytosis, now understood to overlap substantially with the pathway known as ferroptosis. Chronic, low-level activation of this pathway appears to prime neurons for age-related disease long before symptoms appear, which is why the lab treats aging itself, rather than any single disease, as the primary target for intervention.

The Toll on American Families

Alzheimer's disease is not a rare condition confined to a small number of families. It is one of the defining public health challenges facing the United States, and its scale continues to grow each year.

More than 12 million family members and friends currently provide unpaid care for a loved one with Alzheimer's or another dementia, often at significant emotional and financial cost to themselves. Source: Alzheimer's Association, 2026 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures.

From the Lab Bench to Human Trials

Two drug candidates that originated in the Maher Laboratory, CMS121 and J147, are now in human clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease. Moving a compound from a laboratory bench to a clinical trial takes years of exploratory work that federal grants rarely fund at the earliest stages. Philanthropic gifts fill that gap. They allow the lab to pursue new leads, generate the preliminary data needed to compete for larger grants, and move promising compounds toward patients faster.