Banner Health announced a leadership transition at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, with Eric M. Reiman, MD, stepping down from his role effective Oct. 1 to embark on a new chapter in his professional and personal life. Over his 38-year career, Dr. Reiman helped shape the global fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Under his leadership as founding CEO, Banner Alzheimer’s Institute became an internationally recognized Center of Excellence, advancing prevention research and fostered landmark public-private partnerships that have brought the field closer than ever to the first approved Alzheimer’s prevention therapies.
Dr. Reiman plans to transition to independent roles that focus on Alzheimer’s prevention and the emerging role of blood biomarkers and spend more time with his family. He will continue to provide his expertise as a senior advisor and collaborator at the Banner Alzheimer’s and Banner Sun Health Research Institutes, participate in the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative and Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, and maintain his academic relationships with the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). He will also continue to serve as Board Chair of the Flinn Foundation.
“Dr. Reiman’s contributions to Alzheimer’s research have been nothing short of transformative,” said Corey Casper, MD, senior vice president and chief research officer of Banner Health. “His ability to build coalitions, inspire collaboration and pursue bold ideas with scientific rigor has driven landmark breakthroughs and positioned Banner as a global leader in Alzheimer’s prevention. We are deeply committed to building on the extraordinary foundation he has created and carrying this vital work forward.”
Banner Health will conduct a national search for the next leader of Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, and Dr. Casper will provide executive oversight in the interim. Separately, Jessica Langbaum, PhD, senior director of Alzheimer’s prevention at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, will assume the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium director role in October. Dr. Langbaum succeeded Dr. Reiman as director of the NIH-sponsored Arizona Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in 2024 and brings deep expertise and a strong continuity of vision to this work.
A psychiatrist and brain imaging researcher by training, Dr. Reiman is internationally recognized for pioneering contributions to brain imaging, genetics, multi-omics and blood biomarker research, including the presymptomatic detection of Alzheimer’s biomarker changes in people at increased genetic risk. He has authored more than 800 publications and received numerous honors, including the Potamkin Prize, widely regarded as the highest international award in Alzheimer’s research.
His prevention work spans more than three decades, beginning with a landmark 1996 New England Journal of Medicine study demonstrating Alzheimer’s brain imaging changes in cognitively unimpaired people carrying two copies of the APOE4 gene — laying the groundwork for detecting the disease before symptoms appear.
In 1998, Dr. Reiman and his Arizona colleagues established the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, which became a destination center in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease and a national model of statewide collaboration in biomedical research. In 2001, they established the NIH’s first statewide Arizona Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He and his Banner colleagues forged a partnership with Dr. Francisco Lopera and Colombian colleagues to detect, study and ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s in members of the world’s largest autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s kindred, 1,200 of whom carry a gene that makes them virtually certain to develop the disease at an early age.
In 2006, Dr. Reiman and colleagues founded Banner Alzheimer’s Institute around three bold goals: to find and support FDA approval of the first effective Alzheimer’s prevention therapy within a generation, establish a new standard of care for patients and caregivers, and build new models of collaboration and resource sharing to have the greatest impact. In 2010, they established the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative, which helped launch a new era in Alzheimer’s prevention research. In 2012, they secured support for the first NIH-backed prevention drug trial, which was named a Scientific American “World-Changing Idea.” This study and related efforts helped catalyze approximately 20 past, present and planned prevention trials globally, including other industry and NIH-supported trials.
“While there is no guarantee, the field now has a realistic chance to find and support access to the first effective ‘secondary prevention therapy’ in people with a positive Alzheimer’s blood test sometime next year, better secondary prevention therapies to follow, and the first effective primary prevention therapy in those without detectable disease in roughly five years,” said Dr. Reiman. “I am extremely excited about the chance to help make that happen.”
