YouTube and The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) today launched a comprehensive Internet video channel dedicated to the improved understanding of incurable neurodegenerative brain diseases.
The UCSF Memory and Aging Center YouTube channel can be found at http://www.youtube.com/UCSFMemoryandAging. The multimedia offering represents the latest step by one of the world's leading neuroscience research teams to engage the public and the medical community in an aggressive search for the causes and cures of debilitating brain conditions known as "dementias."
The YouTube channel is part of an overall Internet campaign that will help UCSF's researchers and clinicians reach out to a global audience in the fight against these devastating diseases. With this novel use of technology, the UCSF Memory and Aging Center stands at the forefront of a vitally important, and potentially groundbreaking, new paradigm for addressing serious public health issues, patient advocacy, and medical research and fundraising.
"Science flourishes in an environment that fosters communication, and one of the great things about the YouTube channel is that it gives us a rapid mechanism for communicating with physicians and caregivers who suspect that their patients or loved ones may suffer from one of these illnesses," says Bruce Miller, MD, director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. "All of the dementias -- including Alzheimer's disease, Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Huntington's disease and others -- share common features. Our goal is to increase awareness of the earliest signs of these diseases, so they can be accurately diagnosed, and patients can get into clinical trials sooner. We believe that early intervention with novel therapies will be key to stalling and halting these diseases."
The YouTube collaboration was inspired by the "Fight for Mike," an initiative by Silicon Valley leaders to save the life of former Apple/Netscape marketing ace Mike Homer, who was diagnosed last spring with CJD and is being treated at UCSF. Homer's close friends, Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, and Intuit Chairman William V. Campbell lead the initiative.
"Mike Homer is one of the great people who helped build Silicon Valley," says Ron Conway. "His extraordinary energy, creativity and passion helped drive the success of major companies and start-ups. The Fight for Mike is intended to honor his spirit and drive the medical research underway at UCSF to cure CJD and related diseases. We're hoping the YouTube channel will support this effort."
The YouTube channel features UCSF's renowned clinical-researchers discussing disease characteristics -- which are often subtle and not well known, even among members of the medical community. Personal stories of patients and family members are also featured, together with practical advice and coping strategies from health care professionals.
To further support the initiative, UCSF's Internet campaign is comprised of these other elements: