Thursday, October 1, 2026
Long Island innovation has helped solve some of our country’s greatest challenges of the past. America needs our help again in a modern-day challenge, the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.
When the United States was plunged into World War II, Long Island aircraft manufacturers produced airplanes like the P-47 Thunderbolt and the F6F Hellcat, which helped lead our country to victory in Europe and the Pacific.
After President John F. Kennedy set the seemingly impossible goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, less than three weeks after America’s first-ever manned spaceflight on May 5, 1961, it was Long Island engineers who created the lunar module that made Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” possible.
During the Cold War, Long Island was the birthplace of the F-14 Tomcat, arguably the U.S. Navy’s most iconic fighter jet, made even more famous in the movie “Top Gun.”
Alzheimer’s is another great challenge, a growing public health crisis, nationally and locally. More than 7 million Americans, including over 400,000 residents of New York state and 60,000 Long Islanders, currently live with Alzheimer’s. Those numbers will continue to rise rapidly without a cure or significant disease-modifying treatment. Scientific breakthroughs are the only way to make them possible.
Those breakthroughs can happen right here. Just as innovative, locally based aerospace companies like Grumman and Republic met the challenges of decades past, world-class research institutions in Nassau and Suffolk counties can solve Alzheimer’s. The good news is that they’re already hard at work.
Researchers at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine, in Mineola, are using genetic material collected in blood samples to examine what happens inside the brain cells of someone living with Alzheimer’s. By comparing the differences between these cells and those taken from healthy people, the team aims to develop ways to reprogram unhealthy neurons to behave more like those in healthy people.
Scientists at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, in Manhasset, are exploring the causes of hallucination, agitation and aggression as they relate to Alzheimer’s, with the goal of developing new treatments. Neuropsychiatric symptoms are among the most difficult and heartbreaking situations families face when caring for loved ones with the disease, and are often one of the main reasons families move them from their homes to residential health care settings.
Stony Brook University investigators are researching how crucial memory neurons, called cholinergic neurons, are damaged by Alzheimer’s. Drugs commonly used to improve memory in those with neurodegenerative diseases, known as cholinesterase inhibitors, target cholinergic neurons, but have only a modest effect. By better understanding how Alzheimer’s damages these neurons, Stony Brook’s research team hopes to develop new therapies that more effectively target and treat the damage and return the neurons to a normal state.
Each of these projects, which are supported by grant funding from the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, has the potential to yield a game-changing discovery that will forever alter people’s lives for the better.
Challenges don’t scare Long Islanders, because we’ve stepped up to meet them head on time and time again. Dedicated, passionate research scientists are working tirelessly to meet the challenges of Alzheimer’s, because they understand what’s at stake. As with other great problems that Long Island helped solve, America, and all of humanity, will be grateful if we’re successful.
Charles J. Fuschillo Jr., of Merrick, is president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.
