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Byrd Alzheimer's Center Opens Amid Funding War

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2007

TAMPA - Tangled fibers and sticky protein clumps mar the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients as their clarity of mind slips away.

Tangled politics and sticky personalities surround Florida's five-year-old Alzheimer's disease initiative, threatening its potential to yield new treatments or even a cure.

The Johnnie B. Byrd Sr. Alzheimer's Center and Research Institute opens its doors to the public today for a grand opening of its $33 million building in Tampa. The festivities take place in the shadow of looming state budget cuts - up to $10 million of the center's annual $15 million appropriation - and talk of taking away that earmark for good.

Outside researchers want the state to spend the center's earmark on a grant program that could feed their own work on Alzheimer's. Durell Peaden, who oversees the Senate's health care budget, has another idea: Apply those dollars toward geriatrics programs at hospitals. At the same time, he has suggested transferring oversight of the Byrd center to Florida State University, some 275 miles away.

Proponents say such changes ultimately would benefit the fledgling center and further its mission to help Alzheimer's patients. Byrd officials warn that such cuts and overhauls will handicap their project, at best, or, at worst, derail it entirely.

Budget Busting

Nationwide, 5.1 million people are believed to suffer from Alzheimer's disease, a fatal neurological disorder. Florida alone is home to 435,000 Alzheimer's patients; the Alzheimer's Association predicts that number will rise to 450,000 by 2010.

Researchers can hear the clock ticking. In a dark alcove of a Byrd lab, a new $130,000 computer program cuts the time it takes researcher Bonnie Goodwin to count chromosomes under a microscope's lens from 'hours and hours' to about 40 minutes. 'This is so much easier now,' she said.

Goodwin, whose mother suffers from Alzheimer's, is studying genetic links between the disease and Down syndrome. Other Byrd researchers are seeking a vaccine and investigating the effects of mental stimulation, an antidepressant, even caffeine. Before this summer, Byrd researchers relied on older lab facilities at adjacent University of South Florida.

Although the top two floors of its six-level facility remain works in progress, the center is ready to recruit researchers, said Director Huntington Potter, pointing to a folder bulging with applications. It will take money to bring in top-caliber talent, he said, and assurance that funding will not dry up once they get here. Potter now can promise neither.

Last month, the state Department of Elder Affairs targeted the Byrd center's $10 million in a plan to reduce the agency's budget by 10 percent. The proposal came at the behest of Gov. Charlie Crist, who instructed all agencies to suggest cuts before lawmakers return next month to shore up a $1.1 billion shortfall in the state budget.

The Byrd cut accounts for nearly 75 percent of Elder Affairs' plan to cut general revenue spending.

'That was kind of appalling,' said Rep. Richard Glorioso, R-Plant City, who opposes the cut. 'I think they thought that this way, they can keep all their people happy and not have to make any tough decisions.'

A two-thirds funding cut will prevent the center from hiring scientists and could damage its recruitment potential permanently, Potter said.

'I can explain to potential applicants a budget cut that is in line with everyone else's,' he said. 'Anything more sends the signal that we've been targeted, that the Legislature made a mistake.'

Crist later endorsed slicing the center's $10 million, noting his priority to fund direct services for patients and their caregivers first.

'We're probably going to cut it that much,' said Peaden, chairman of the Senate health care appropriations committee. 'I'm kind of where the governor is.'

Research And Rivalry

While the center's leaders worried, a private Sarasota research organization saw an opportunity to educate lawmakers about other projects that could soak up some of the state's research dollars.

In a letter Aug. 21 to Crist and legislative leaders, Roskamp Institute Director Michael Mullan argued against 'recent media reports' suggesting that shorting the Byrd budget would jeopardize Alzheimer's research in Florida.

'While we have always asked that these funds be distributed in a fair and competitive manner as opposed to being solely sourced to one facility, ... cutting edge Alzheimer's research in Florida will continue by way of the Roskamp Institute and other Institutes in Florida,' Mullan wrote.

Byrd representatives were incensed.

'We took that letter as a suggestion to the Legislature that they need not fund the Byrd institute and that there would be no ill effect from it,' said Melanie Meyer, the center's external affairs director.

Mullan denied trying to coax anyone with his letter into cutting the appropriation, but he also argued that the state is undermining the Byrd's scientific credibility by sending it blank checks. That money, he said, should fuel a competitive grant program for Alzheimer's research. Based on the National Institutes of Health's model, he said, external scientists would review applications from across the state and award grants to the best.

State funding could speed work at Mullan's institute on one of the few experimental Alzheimer's therapies in the world that has progressed to human clinical trials. If successful, Mullan said, the drug could appear on the market in several years.

Federal Recognition

Potter said he does not expect blind funding forever, but moving to a purely competitive funding model would harm the Byrd's mission to attract scientists to Florida.

'What will happen is that out-of-state researchers won't come, because the only thing they're being offered is the opportunity to apply for a politically established state grant,' he said.

A council of scientists oversees research at the Byrd center, which grants a portion of its funding to outside researchers. The center's strongest claim to credibility is its designation as an Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

In 2005, the National Institute on Aging awarded ADRC designation and a $7.3 million grant to a statewide research consortium led by the Byrd center. Competition was stiff, as budget constraints cap the number of centers at about 30, said Creighton Phelps, director of the program at the Institute on Aging. ADRCs must reapply every five years, and there are no guarantees of renewal.

Phelps credited Potter with securing ADRC designation just four months after arriving at the Byrd. Mullan acknowledged that he had applied for ADRC designation without success.

Today, he said, he is trying only to further the cause of research.

Potter saw things differently, describing Mullan as 'sitting on the side of the road and preparing IEDs.'

'It is not helpful to the cause of curing Alzheimer's disease for institutions to start attacking each other,' Potter said.

The FSU Byrd Center?

If Mullan is a thorn in Potter's side, Johnnie Byrd is a spear. The former state House speaker, who sits on the center's board, has attacked the center's financial management. Last year, he tried unsuccessfully to oust Potter from his leadership role.

'The board members have increasingly felt as though the emphasis has been more on bureaucracy than research,' Byrd said. 'I don't want to get into a tit for tat with Hunt Potter; he has great potential as a researcher, and that's his forte. Management is obviously not his background.'

Among the expenses that drew fire was a $7,300 trip for Potter and another researcher to a Madrid conference. Potter defended that expense, saying it was the most important international scientific meeting on Alzheimer's research.

Byrd and lawmakers also have criticized spending on advocacy. An annual expense report ending on June 30 shows the center spent $408,000 on external affairs, including nearly $137,200 for government relations. The center has hired Ron Sachs Communications in Tallahassee to handle public relations and recently hired a third contract lobbyist. A fourth is providing assistance pro bono, said Meyer, who lobbies as well. Meyer, whose then-$155,000 salary raised scrutiny last year, has voluntarily taken a $30,000 pay cut.

Now Byrd and Peaden are talking about folding the center into a university. That would tighten accountability and reduce overhead, said Peaden, who suggested Florida State University, owing to its medical school's mission to serve the elderly and other underserved populations.

FSU leaders said oversight of the Byrd is not their idea and that they are not pursuing it. The plan reached the ears of USF officials, who objected to FSU taking over an institution that literally sits on USF ground, as the Byrd center does.

USF officials are countering now with their own proposal to oversee the center. USF lobbyist Mark Walsh said it could remain semi-independent with its own board, as the USF Patel Charter School does, or it could become a university institute. The latter option would allow USF to share more of its resources, he said, such as accounting and legal staff.

That makes sense to Byrd, who has drafted legislation to transfer control to USF. Potter agreed that USF could be an advantageous steward, provided the center retains adequate autonomy. Oversight by FSU would be confusing and probably cumbersome, he said.

Peaden, who is open to the USF option, also would like to use much of the center's earmark to create geriatrics residencies at hospitals across the state. Florida has a dearth of residencies for medical postdoctoral students, he said, creating a brain drain of future doctors leaving the state. His plan, he said, would keep medical talent in Florida while providing more doctors and services for Alzheimer's patients.

It's a great idea, Potter said, but not at the expense of research.

The center's director said he was blindsided last year by Byrd's attempt to remove him. Byrd seems disenchanted now with the center because he no longer wields the control over it he once had, Potter said.

Byrd pushed to create the center in memory of his father, who died of Alzheimer's, but the younger Byrd's hard-charging tactics left bitter feelings in Tallahassee, complicating the center's future even today. In 2006, lawmakers took control over appointments to its board, which initially brimmed with Johnnie Byrd's allies.

Recently, Byrd denied twisting arms to create his legacy project. He has no regrets over his past handling of it, he said, and no desire to control it now - though he does, he said, talk to House and Senate appropriators almost daily.

Meanwhile, the Byrd center's board continues to tighten its oversight of its roughly $18 million operating budget. Last week, board members agreed to whittle down the center's lobbying contracts to one firm, at a cost of $50,000 or less.

Whittling down the center's budget by $10 million, Meyer said, is hard to fathom. 'To me it's pretty staggering what you would have to cut.'

Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382 or cdolinski@tampatrib.com.

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