Alzheimer’s Research UK launches £30m Drug Discovery Alliance

Dementia research charity Alzheimer’s Research UK has announced a £30 million ($46 million) Drug Discovery Alliance, launching three flagship Drug Discovery Institutes at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College London (UCL).

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 £23 billion a year. 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 create 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.