Over 20,000 volunteers are participating in a groundbreaking dementia research initiative to speed up drug development by focusing on early detection and intervention. The study highlights the role of inflammation and metabolism in cognitive decline, aiming to delay the onset of dementia symptoms significantly. More than 20,000 volunteers have been recruited to a resource aimed at speeding up the development of much-needed dementia drugs.
The cohort will enable scientists in universities and industry to involve healthy individuals who may be at increased risk of dementia in clinical trials to test whether new drugs can slow the decline in various brain functions including memory and delay the onset of dementia. Using the resource, scientists have already been able to show for the first time that two important bodily mechanisms – inflammation and metabolism – play a role in the decline in brain function as we age. By 2050, approximately 139 million people are expected to be living with dementia worldwide.
In the UK, in 2022, UK Prime Minister launched the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission, part of the government’s commitment to double increase research funding for dementia. Although there has been recent progress in developing drugs that slow down the progression of the disease, the two leading treatments only have a small effect, and the vast majority of new approaches that work in animal studies fail when it comes to patient clinical trials. Challenges in Drug Deve.
