Dr. Joseph Rogers, founder of the Sun Health Research Institute (SHRI) in Sun City, Ariz., and a pioneer in the field of Alzheimer's disease research, has received the National Alzheimer's Association's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award was bestowed on Rogers and three other scientists during a ceremony Sunday at the Ninth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in Philadelphia, an event attended by more than 4,500 scientists.

Rogers is perhaps best known for his 1985 paper that demonstrated the impact of inflammatory brain damage on the onset of Alzheimer's disease, research that spawned a legion of confirming and related studies in the subsequent two decades.

After receiving his doctorate from the University of California-San Diego, Rogers went on to research positions at the Salk Institute and the New England Alzheimer's Disease Center at Harvard University. In addition, he taught as assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School before arriving in Arizona to set up Sun Health in 1986.

SHRI is a premier Alzheimer's research facility, housing 31 M.D. and Ph.D. faculty who conduct preventive and treatment-based research on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, among others. SHRI, which has recently collaborated with the Translational Genomics Research Consortium and Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, was named one of 29 designated Alzheimer's Disease Centers by the National Institutes of Health.

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For more information:

Ninth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease Press Release, 07/18/2004

"Understanding Alzheimer's: Researchers come together with one common goal," TechConnect, 07/04/2004

Three scientists leverage brain trust, collaboration in combating Alzheimer's, 02/11/2004