Patients Win! Columbia Gets $16M to Establish Treatment Center/Trials Network

A new center at Columbia University will open this summer to patients. The Cohen Center for Health & Recovery from Tick-Borne Diseases has been established through a $16M grant from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to Columbia. Brian Fallon, MD, will be Center Director, Shannon Delaney, MD, co-director. Patients at the Center will be invited to enroll in clinical trials, brain imaging and neuropsychiatric studies. Physicians will be invited to annually submit treatment study ideas to the trials network for consideration.

Lyme Disease Association Pat Smith had this to say:  “This is the best possible news for patients who have been neglected for decades by much of the medical community. Often unable to get a timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment, many patients have gone on to develop chronic Lyme disease, facing debilitating manifestations, which have prevented them from working or going to school and even causing death.  Having a Treatment Center, a Clinical Trials Network, and a Research Center in one institution will certainly provide a three prong attack on a disease causing 476,000 people annually to be diagnosed and treated in the U.S.–Lyme disease–and allows for other tick-borne diseases to be addressed at the same time. ”

Dr. Fallon is also Director of the Columbia Lyme & Tick-Borne Diseases Research center, which was established in 2008 by the Lyme Disease Association Inc. and Time for Lyme (now GLA).