£12.5 million clinic to help find neurodegeneration disease cure

Barchester News
21/09/2005
The Medical Research Council has announced £12.5 million worth of funding to create a new centre for neurodegeneration disease research.

A new £12.5 million centre for research into neurodegeneration has been announced by the Medical Research Council (MRC) today.

The MRC Centre for Neurodegenerative Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, will open later this year and will be directed by Professor Brian Anderton, a leading expert in Alzheimer's disease.

Designed to further understand the mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Motor Neurone Disease (MND), the centre will help translate research into new treatments and diagnostics.

Over half a million people have AD in the UK and this number is likely to rise with the increase in the elderly population. It is also estimated that there are up to 5,000 people with MND in the UK.

A key feature of the centre will be its capability to carry out translational research; bringing together scientists investigating the causative mechanisms of these conditions in the laboratory with clinical colleagues treating patients and conducting clinical trials.

The director of the centre, Professor Brian Anderton, said: "The centre will bring together clinicians and basic scientists and foster a research environment in which they will work together and exchange ideas, in other words, translational research.

"This 'bedside-to-bench and bench-to-bedside' approach offers the best prospects for discovering new treatments for these progressive degenerative conditions and will also provide excellent training opportunities for both scientists and clinicians".