New Institute for Novel Dementia Treatments Opens

A £30 million Alliance to speed up the development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementias was launched on February 16^th by Alzheimers Research UK, with three new Drug Discovery Institutes at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL (University College London). This multi-site collaboration will see 90 new research scientists employed in state-of-the-art facilities to fast-track new research discoveries and help implement new treatments for the disease.

The Alzheimer's Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute will receive a third of the £30 million grant and build on major recent investments by the university and other substantial recent grants received by the project leaders (totalling in excess of £40 million). It will be located in the University's newly-established Target Discovery Institute.

According to Professor Simon Lovestone, one of the Oxford University project leaders, ‘Advances in science and technology are revolutionising our approach to healthcare, but dementia is playing catch up with other areas of disease research and needs a step change. With heart attack deaths halved and cancer survival rates in the UK doubled, it’s a sad fact that there are still few options for people with dementia. The Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Drug Discovery Alliance represents the best coordinated and strategic effort to make progress in dementia research and will build on  successes in tackling other diseases to give us the best chance of making a difference. We’re proud to be hosting a Drug Discovery Institute here at the University of Oxford.’

The research team at Oxford aims to deliver at least three new therapies for further clinical development and trials within the next five years.

All of the new findings from the research will made freely available to the world’s research community. ‘This has never been done before, and we believe that it will transform dementia research’, said Professor Chas Bountra, the other project leader at Oxford University, ‘We will work with the best academic and industrial scientists to identify potential new drug targets for dementia. We will then generate high quality starting points for making new medicines, but then uniquely, make them freely available to the world’s biomedical community. By doing so we will catalyse new biology, new disease understanding and importantly accelerate those few molecules which are likely to slow down the progression of this dreadful disease. We are crowd sourcing the discovery of new medicines for Alzheimer’s disease. This is unprecedented.’

Oxford University already carries out Alzheimer’s disease research collaboratively with multiple pharmaceutical and other industry partners, as well as with universities across the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. Many active labs within Oxford University are also working on all aspects of neurodegeneration.