YouTube (News - Alert) and The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have launched an Internet video channel that will help in understanding incurable neurodegenerative brain diseases in a better way.

This channel, known as the UCSF Memory and Aging Center YouTube channel is available online at http://www.youtube.com/UCSFMemoryandAging. The neuroscience research teams have tried to urge the public and the medical community to find the causes and cures of debilitating brain conditions known as 'dementias', through this multimedia effort made by them.

 

An Internet campaign is being carried out to help UCSF's researchers and clinicians reach out to a global audience in the fight against these devastating diseases, and this channel at YouTube is a part of the campaign.

 

 The UCSF Memory and Aging Center aims at deploying an important, and potentially groundbreaking, new paradigm for addressing serious public health issues, patient advocacy, and medical research and fundraising, deploying this use of technology.

 

Bruce Miller (News - Alert), MD, UCSF Memory and Aging Center, said that 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.

 

He noted that all of the dementias including Alzheimer's disease, Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Huntington’s disease and others share common features, and UCSF aims at increasing awareness of the earliest signs of these diseases, so they can be accurately diagnosed, and patients can get into clinical trials sooner.

 

The inspiration for the YouTube collaboration came from an initiative by Silicon Valley leaders named 'Fight for Mike', that had been carried out for saving the life of Mike Homer, the former Apple (News - Alert)/Netscape marketing ace. Mike had been diagnosed with CJD last spring, and is being treated at UCSF. The Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, and Chairman of Intuit (News - Alert), William V. Campbell, who are friends of Mike, have lead this new initiative.

 

Ron commented that Mike Homer is one of the great people who helped build Silicon Valley, and his extraordinary energy, creativity and passion helped drive the success of major companies and start-ups. Ron added that the Fight for Mike is intended to honor his spirit and drive the medical research underway at UCSF to cure CJD and related diseases, and expressed hope that YouTube channel will support this effort by them.