Alzheimer's Corporation

In 1999 William K. Summers, MD quietly started the Alzheimer's Clinic in Albuquerque to further study innovative treatments and to solve problems of Alzheimer's disease. This medical clinic was founded on the following principles:

1. Alzheimer's disease may be deferrable or even preventable.
2. Memory problems (Senior Moments) are related to Alzheimer's disease.
3. Accurate diagnosis is available now and between 87-94% accurate (autopsy is not necessary to reliably diagnose and treat Alzheimer's disease).
4. Effective treatments are currently available for Alzheimer's victims.
5. Available treatments are much more effective than the public is lead to believe.

Just suppose…that a hypothetical group of five million Americans not only receive $120 billion dollars of benefits per year, but spend an additional $137 billion per year pursuing diagnosis, medical treatment and home health care options for their common "problem". This sector economy would exceed $250 billion per year. If an innovative company were to save just 10% of the $250 billion, while improving care and services, would this company not generate over a billion dollars in annual revenues?

This is not a hypothetical case. Such a circumstance exists today. The five million beneficiaries are the victims of Alzheimer's disease. The innovative company is AC (Alzheimer's Corporation). Its innovative approach to proper diagnosis and care of Alzheimer's patients and the memory-impaired in the community gives better quality of life. The duration of custodial care required is reduced.

MISSION STATEMENT

AC is a medical enterprise dedicated to effective and responsive care for the memory-impaired and demented patient and their caregivers, its purpose being the substantial health improvement of the frail and the robust elderly.

HISTORY

The Company was formed in May, 1999, by Dr. William K. Summers. This is the same Dr. Summers who discovered and patented Tacrine (Cognex®), the first FDA-approved drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. That discovery opened an entire field of science, the effective treatment of dementias.

In 1977, when Alzheimer's disease was felt to be rare, Dr. Summers believed that it was in fact common, and mislabeled as "senility". Dr. Summers hypothesized that the problem was in the cholinergic neuronal pathways of the brain. In 1981, he published his theory. In 1986, he published the first report detailing the treatment of Alzheimer's patients for an average of one year with the drug Tacrine. In 1993, Tacrine, now known as Cognex® , became the first FDA-approved drug for treating Alzheimer's disease.
In his more than twenty years of work with memory-impaired patients, Dr. Summers has worked out a comprehensive approach to the diagnosis and treatment of these patients that encompasses services both for patients and their caregivers. Dr. Summers dreamed of company that would specialize in prevention and treatment of dementia. As such, it would not be limited to either the Alzheimer patient, or the frail elderly patient suffering severe dementia; instead, it would also serve the robust elderly with minimum memory impairment, as well as providing for the unique needs of caregivers.

THE NEED

At present, there are approximately five million demented patients in America. Minimally, there are an additional five million memory-impaired elderly who could benefit from treatment. Eighty-five percent of nursing home patients suffer some form of dementia, yet their actual needs are not fully addressed. And nursing homes care for only twenty percent of dementia patients in the U.S.! Eighty percent of dementia patients are being cared for in the community, often by family caregivers. These patients and their caregivers are greatly underserved. Proper diagnosis and comprehensive treatment options are often lacking. Additionally, the length of time that a caregiver can keep their patient at home is shortened by the lack of respite care available.

BACKGROUND:
Alois Alzheimer, MD (misspelled alzhimers, alzhimer, alzhimer's alzhiemer's, and alzhiemers) was a German neurologist and neuropathologist. He was working in a psychiatric hospital in Munich and cared for a most unusual case. It was a 48 year old female brought to the hospital by her husband for bizarre behavior. She was confused, unable to remember how to cook or do house work. She forgot who her husband was and began having short term memory problems. She would suffer from auditory and visual hallucinations. She died at age 51. Dr. Alzheimer examined the brain with the help of his famous pathologist friend, Dr. Franz Nissel. With special staining he was able to visualize death of nerve cells with senile plaques and neurofibrillatory tangles. In 1907 he published this single case study became famous. For the next eighty years "Alzheimer's disease" was felt to be a rare illness that caused dementia in people under the age of 65. The only progress on the illness was to discover that the plaques were a waxy protein called beta amyloid. Curiously the brains of demented mongoloid Down's syndrome patient's had huge quantities of beta amyloid in their brains.

The illness was described as progressive, irreversible and always fatal. There was no treatment.

There was no hope.

In 1976, Robert Butler, MD of the National Institutes of Health promoted a curious finding of Robert Terry, MD. From a pathologic point of view, Dr. Terry could not find a wit of difference between "Alzheimer's disease (Pre-senile dementia)" and Senile Dementia. Further the course from first symptoms to death was identical. In 1978, two English groups discovered an enzyme deficiency in the brains of Senile Dementia patients. This enzyme, choline acetyltransferase which exists inside the cell, was closely tied to the areas of the brain responsible for memory.

With this exciting news, William K. Summers, MD, began quietly working on drugs that blocked the enzyme acetylcholinesterase a drug outside the nerve cell that cleaved the transmitter acetylcholine. This class of drugs are best known as war drugs such as nitrogen mustard gas, and sarin gas. However, certain drugs showed promise as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. In 1986 Dr. Summers and his UCLA team published a study of treatment of Alzheimer's patients for an average of one year with the drug THA (tacrine, or 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-9-aminoacridine) [Summers WK, Majovski LJ, Marsh GM, Tachiki KH, Kling A. Use of oral THA in long-term treatment of senile dementia, Alzheimer's type. New England Journal of Medicine 1986; 315:1241-1245.] This innovative treatment caught the scientific world, which was not prepared to diagnose or treat dementias, by surprise.

In 1993 tacrine (Cognex®) was approved by the FDA. Over the next ten years doctors and scientists gradually and some begrudgingly admitted that Alzheimer's disease could be treated. By 1995, Dr. Summers began working on the next phase of his approach to Alzheimer's disease. It was apparent that the prevailing common wisdom was flawed. For example, neither the beta amyloid protein (plaques) or the tau protein (neurofibrillatory tangles) theories of causation made sense to Dr. Summers. Plaques and tangles are accumulation of dead nerve cell debris. Thus to hypothesize plaques and tangles as a cause of Alzheimer's was wrong. It was like looking at graves and declaring that tombstones cause people to die.

In 1999, Dr. Summers started the Alzheimer's Clinic of Albuquerque to explore some of his theories of treatment. Further details on his principles are as follows.

1. Alzheimer's disease may be deferrable or even preventable.
This principle was professed over 7 years ago. At the time most people did not understand that the brain is capable of regeneration of nerve cells. Most scientists believed in the genetic, Beta amyloid, or tau theory. Dr. Summers felt that Alzheimer's disease was caused by any of a number of brain injuries which lead to a final common pathway of oxidative injury, inflammation, and spiraling local pockets of brain cell death. Alzheimer's is similar to rheumatoid arthritis; except it is inflamation of the brain, while rheumatoid arthritis is inflammation of joints. This radical hypothesis was published in 2004 [Summers, WK. Alzheimer's disease, oxidative injury, and cytokines. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. 6:651-657, 2004. ]

2. Memory problems (Senior Moments) are related to Alzheimer's disease.
In 1993, Dr. Summers hypothesized that Alzheimer's disease was a "slow disease" He reasoned that the leading cause of dementia in 1899 which filled long term nursing institutes was and infectious disease ...... syphilis which was contracted 30 years or more before. Dr. Summers reasoned that various insults to the brain could later lead to dementia. This is the case with pugilistic dementia seen years after a boxer had retired from fighting. Candidates seemed to be hypertension, diabetes, atrial fibrillation (skipped heart beats), open heart surgery, and DNA viruses. Today these are all accepted as pre-Alzheimer's condition. The list has expanded to include obesity, head trauma, and the bacterium chlamydia pneumoniae.

Mild Cognitive Impairment (forgetfulness, senior moments) was discovered to indeed be a pre- Alzheimer's condition by Dr. Ron Petersen of the Mayo Clinic (Petersen RC, Smith GE, Waring SC, et al. Mild cognitive impairment: clinical characterization and outcome. Arch Neurol 1999; 56:303- 308. Chertkow H. Mild cognitive impairment. Curr Opin Neurol 2002;15:401-407.)

Like cancer or any other illness, Dr. Summers began to aggressively apply treatments to early dementias in the Alzheimer's Clinic of Albuquerque. Several strategies used in the clinic have become cutting edge treatment elsewhere.

3. Accurate diagnosis is available now and between 87-94% accurate (autopsy is not necessary to reliably diagnose and treat Alzheimer's disease). Help is on the way!
In 1978 when Dr. Summers began treating patients with dementia, he established a detailed means of making the diagnosis by way of a serious of blood tests, urinalysis, brain CT scan, and the revolutionary new imaging technique called the cranial MRI. By this means he was able to be better than 90 % accurate at autopsy.

Today this has become the standard. Nevertheless, even two years ago a major charity was advertising that the only way to make the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease with certainty was by autopsy. The battery of tests is quite time consuming, costly, and often uncomfortable.

Further research has shown that a person with memory complaint 60 years or older has a 87% chance of having Alzheimer disease. Sixty-five percent will be Alzheimer's disease alone. Twenty-two will have vascular component, Parkinson's disease or other non-treatable contributing factors. Thus, today all such patients are started on treatment for Alzheimer's. If the response is not what is anticipated, selective further tests are done.

It is the individuation of the care that makes the Alzheimer's Clinic of Albuquerque unique.

4. Effective treatments are currently available for Alzheimer's victims.
The clinic starts with the assumption that there is something that can be done to improve the circumstance of the dementia victim. For example, clinical depressions in 60% Alzheimer victims. In the Alzheimer Clinic of Albuquerque, these are diagnosed and treated. Treatment almost always involves several medications. Severe illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, and hypertension often require multiple medications. Alzheimer's effects multiple neurotransmitters of the brain, so multiple treatments should be expected. When beneficial, bio-supplements are added as they tend to return cellular mechanisms to normal.

5. Available treatments are much more effective than the public is lead to believe.
Results of the clinic approaches often are dramatically better than "standard" care. Please see some of the testimonials for the family comments.

THE COMPANY

Dr. Summers envisions a network of clinics nationwide that will intervene when memory first begins to fail-a bold vision shared by only a handful of physicians. The typical approach is to intervene when the person is seriously challenged by memory loss. Each clinic would eventually have an associated daycare center. The vision is to provide accurate diagnosis, active treatment and local in-community care for dementia patients. A consistent quality of care within this chain of clinics would be a necessity. Dr. Summers compares this consistent quality to that found in a chain of McDonald's Restaurants. "Ray Kroc was obsessed about standardized quality of McDonald's French fries", said Dr. Summers. "AC must be equally obsessed with consistent quality of patient care in each of its clinics."

Dr. Summers spent the last few two years developing a functional medical software that guides medical records, writes prescriptions, publishes handouts for patient education, and generates billing data. This web-enabled medical application will also allow centralized medical record generation and storage. Consistency of care becomes possible with real-time analysis of patient care. This resulting software product has become a marketable entity within itself, and the Company is exploring the possibilities of marketing it commercially.

Another facet of the Company, the formulation and sale of neuroceutical supplements, reflects Dr. Summers' belief that nutritional supplements can work in harmony with drugs in the battle against debilitating memory impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

AC has three divisions which compliment one another. Its core unit is the CLINICAL DIVISION, which serves the memory-impaired patient and his or her caregiver. The basic product of these clinics is accurate diagnosis of memory complaints using specialized laboratory testing, followed by aggressive treatment with medications and supplements. A future service of the AC clinic will be the associated daycare centers for the elderly, which will substantially reduce the stress on caregivers.

The Clinical Division is the platform that markets the other divisions. The clinics will market the neuroceutical supplements as a second income source. The functioning, secure, private Web-enabled medical application with Oracle-based data management available in the clinics will promote external sales of the software (1). This software will give AC clinics a competitive edge as they vie for clinical trial studies, an additional income source (2). AC plans to create "model clinics" in the Southwest according to "business plan" franchise models. As each McDonald's outlet is a platform for multiple applications, so each model AC clinic will be an outlet for multiple applications. Model AC clinics have been established in Albuquerque and Los Angeles.

The e-BUSINESS DIVISION is the core of the AC business plan. Internally, the virtual private web-enabled medical application will allow centralized medical records storage. Audits for quality can be accomplished with minimal effort. Billing for services can be automated to real-time point-of-service initiation. This means swift payment and better collection for services. The software imposes guidelines that control quality of care, monitor billing codes, generate clinical notes, print individual prescriptions, print personalized instructional brochures, schedule appointments and monitor physician contact. Medicare and associated insurance companies can be electronically billed. AC can actually run distant clinics from a central site.

This software model has functioned in the experimental Albuquerque Memory Clinic, handling nearly 1,000 patients. The software is non-keyboard driven and thinks like a doctor. The training time is less than four hours per physician.

Because of the ease of use and inherent savings, AC e-application medical records and billing software has a potential market. Made commercially available, the external market for this software should exceed $1 billion per year in sales within five years.

AC's customized software can rapidly evaluate the effectiveness of current and future pharmacological approaches. Tracking can be done individually or by diagnostic group, on a weekly or monthly basis. This "data analysis" capacity of the software makes the AC clinics strong candidates for clinical trials studies by pharmaceutical companies, another source of income.

The NEUROCEUTICAL DIVISION is dedicated to the research, development and formulation of neuroceutical supplements for the general aging population. These are considered preventive measures. These proprietary formulations will include vitamins, smart drugs, hormones, anti-inflammatory agents, and antioxidants. This division has produced "Memory reVITALIZER®", the first of neuroceutical supplement formulations for the prevention of aging effects on the body. A second neuroceutical supplement is Memory Accelorator® developed for younger individuals; The uniqueness of a neuroceutical supplements formulated by a national medical care organization should cause these products stand out among the competition.

Contact the AC.

Alzheimer's Corporation
6000 Uptown Blvd., NE, Suite 308, Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505) 878-0192 (Phone)         (505) 888-6000 (FAX)
General Information: info@alzcorp.com