User:JRPG/UK Dementia Research Institute

The UK Dementia Research Institute is a multi-partner project tasked to provide both clinical research leading to a cure for a range of neurological diseases and wellbeing improvements for those needing care. The project was announced by David Cameron in 2015 following a G8 agreement to beat the disease by 2025. The institute is centred on 6 major universities each of which will investigate a different aspect of the diseases and communicate results. Funding of £250m, intended to cover project grants lasting for five years was initially provided by the Medical Research Council (MRC), Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK though the institute will proactively seek additional partners -charities, governments, industry and similar organisations -to help it achieve its objectives. Professor Bart De Strooper was appointed as the head and took up his post in UCL in January 2017. The diseases to be researched including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Huntington's disease and vascular dementia. Although dementia affects 850,000 people in the UK, costs the economy £26bn and is the leading cause of death, it is the only one, of the top ten causes, which has no known treatment or method of delaying the outcome.The initial funding was intended to match expenditure on Climate change and Aids and boost the £300m already being spent though it was still far less than the £590m spent on Cancer research.

Some 300,000 people live in Britain's 28,000 care homes. Their quality of life can be improved particularly for those with moderate to severe dementia

In December 2016, UCL was nominated to be the hub In January 2018, De Strooper expressed his disappointment on hearing that Pfizer faced with had decided to withdraw from research in this area. He accepted that they had little apparently to show for their money but recommended they concentrate on basic research first and look at the long term potential.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/11/excitement-as-huntingtons-drug-shown-to-slow-progress-of-devastating-disease http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42308341 Huntington’s breakthrough may stop disease https://blog.alzheimers.org.uk/dementia-insight/biggest-dementia-news-2017/

Park info Bio

Bart De Strooper is a professor of molecular medicine at the KU Leuven where he leads the Laboratory for the Research of Neurodegenerative Diseases. Since 2013 he is visiting professor at University College London. He is also Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute. Bart De Strooper’s scientific work is focused on the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that underlie Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. His major findings are the role of presenilin/gamma-secretase in the proteolysis of the amyloid precursor protein and Notch, the role of PARL in mitochondrial apoptosis, and the decrease of microRNA132 in Alzheimer Disease. He received his M.D. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1991 from KU Leuven. He did a postdoc in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in the laboratory of Carlos Dotti.Together with Christian Haass, Bart De Strooper received the Potamkin Award of the American Academy of Neurology in 2002. Other awards include the 2003 Alois Alzheimer Award of the Deutscher Gesellschaft für Gerontopsychiatrie und psychotherapie, the Joseph Maisin Prize in 2005 for fundamental biomedical sciences, awarded by the FWO Flanders every 5 years, and the 2008 Metlife Foundation Award for medical research.

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