University College. UK: Alzheimer’s Research UK today
announced a £30m Drug Discovery Alliance, launching three flagship Drug
Discovery Institutes at UCL, the University of Cambridge and the University of
Oxford. The Drug Discovery Institutes will see 90 new research scientists
employed in state-of-the-art facilities to fast-track the development of new
treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Dementia affects over
830,000 people in the UK and costs the UK economy £23bn a year. Increasing
political focus on improving the outlook for people with dementia in recent
years has led to small increases in research funding, but there remains a
desperate lack of effective treatments for those with the condition. It has
been 12 years since the last treatment for dementia was licensed in the UK and
while current treatments help with symptoms, they are only modestly effective and
not suitable for all dementias. At the
G8 Dementia Summit one year ago, health leaders from across the world pledged a
research ambition for a disease-modifying therapy for dementia by 2025.
Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Drug
Discovery Alliance will make a major contribution to delivering this ambition –
a network of Drug Discovery Institutes dedicated to early stage drug discovery.
Each Institute will be led by a Chief Scientific Officer working in tandem with
some of the UK’s leading academic researchers based at each of the three universities
and Alzheimer’s Research UK’s own in-house research leaders. New ideas and
breakthroughs from academic research teams in each university, and beyond, will
be driven straight into the hands of dedicated biology and chemistry teams in
each Institute, expert in designing and developing potential new medicines.
The UCL Drug Discovery
Institute, embedded within UCL’s multi-Faculty campus in the heart of London,
will unite world-class dementia researchers with drug discovery experts. The University
has strong clinical partnerships with the NHS and state-of-the-art
infrastructure to support this pioneering initiative.
Prof Giampietro Schiavo,
co-Lead Academic Scientist at the UCL Drug Discovery Institute, said: “Although
our understanding of dementia has increased considerably in the past decade,
this has yet to yield commensurate benefits for patients. By bridging the vital
gap between basic research and treatments for patients, the Drug Discovery
Institutes should help us to change this. Harnessing the considerable expertise
in dementia and drug discovery across UCL and throughout the partnership, we
hope to identify promising drugs that could make a real difference to patients’
lives.”
Prof Alan Thompson, Dean of
UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences, said: “The Drug Discovery Institute will
complement other key initiatives at UCL that are essential to the delivery of
new treatments for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, including the recently
opened Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre. It will form part of a
wider commitment by UCL and NHS partners to bring together multi-disciplinary
expertise in dementia research, care and education to rise to the Dementia
Challenge.”
With one dementia researcher
for every six working on cancer, attracting new expertise to tackle the growing
global health problem is crucial. Over the next five years, the Drug Discovery
Institutes aim to attract around 90 world-class researchers into dementia drug
discovery, who will be equipped with the latest technology and infrastructure
through the hosting universities.
Dr Eric Karran, Director of
Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Academic research is a
goldmine of knowledge about diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and by tapping into
the innovation, creativity, ideas and flexibility of scientists in these
universities, we can re-energise the search for new dementia treatments.
Working in universities and hospitals alongside people affected by dementia and
their families, academic researchers are best placed to take research
breakthroughs and progress them into real world benefits for the people that so
desperately need them
“The Drug Discovery Alliance
is one of the first of its kind for dementia research in the world. We’re providing
the investment and infrastructure that is needed to maintain and grow a healthy
pipeline of potential new treatments to take forward into clinical testing. It’s
only by boosting the number of promising leads to follow-up, that we’ll have
the best chance of developing pioneering medicines that can change the outlook
of this devastating condition.”
The Drug Discovery Alliance
builds on the experiences of similar initiatives driven by cancer charities
over the last two decades, which are now starting to deliver effective new
treatments to patients.
- See more at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0215/160215-dementia-drug-discovery-institute#sthash.MeeP6aKQ.dpuf