By Bill Raack, St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis – A prominent St. Louis couple has donated $15 million to Alzheimer's research at Washington University.
The school will rename its Alzheimer's research center after Charles F. and Joanne Knight.
"The Knight funding of the Alzheimer's center will provide us the wherewithal to retain faculty whom we'd like to keep and also to recruit faculty that we need to replace individuals or to go into a new direction that's been developed," said the center's director, John Morris. "We don't have to wait to develop a track record of preliminary findings and then a grant application process and then wait to see if the grant is awarded. We can immediately begin exciting and promising new studies with this wonderful gift."
The couple has donated millions of dollars to Washington University throughout the years. Charles Knight is the former chairman of Emerson. Joanne Knight is a longtime board member and the former chair of the St. Louis chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. Her mother was diagnosed with the disease in the 1980s.