In 2012, three friends, a scientist, a lawyer and a philanthropist, each touched personally or professionally by Alzheimer’s disease (AD), met to discuss challenges in AD research: difficulty securing funding, lack of collaboration across different fields of research, the time it takes to develop research ideas, and little support for early-career researches or those with more novel or experimental ideas.
Their solution was the Charleston Conference on Alzhemer’s Disease (CCAD), a forum for early-career scientists to present their research proposals for review and possible funding. The three goals of the conference – to support early-career investigators, encourage risk and innovative thinking, and foster cross-field collaboration – established a new approach AD research. The first conference was held in March, 2013, in Charleston, South Carolina.