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The UK must recruit half a million people to help it become a hub for clinical trials of the next generation of dementia drugs, the chief scientific adviser to a new government-backed initiative on neurodegenerative disorders has urged.
Neuroscientist Ruth McKiernan said a large database of potential participants would make the country an attractive location for pharmaceutical companies to conduct tests, accelerating the UK's access to medicines and providing potential treatments for the nearly one million people with dementia.
McKiernan will chair the scientific advisory board for the new UK Neurodegeneration Initiative. This is part of an official campaign to be announced on Wednesday to capitalize on scientific breakthroughs that promise for the first time to put diagnosis and treatments for this debilitating condition within reach.
“If we can accelerate how patients get into clinical trials and how those clinical trials are conducted, that will encourage pharmaceutical companies to come here,” McKiernan told the Financial Times, adding, “It would be great to have half a million people.” Volunteers.
“This will encourage them to make sure medicines are available here, and is a route for people to get tested for new medicines in development.”
The Neurodegeneration Initiative will have the mission of promoting more and faster trials of potential dementia diagnostics and treatments. McKernan is the former Chairman of Innovate UK and is currently a venture partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors.
The government aims to create a pool of 20,000 pre-screened people, who are considered to be at risk of dementia or have mild cognitive impairment, and who could be fast-tracked into clinical trials.
McKiernan did not specify a timeline for reaching the potential half-million clinical trials pool, which she said was a personal view and not an official goal.
The government has also pledged £6 million in funding for an early stage biotech in the UK that is working to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases and facilitate clinical trials. It pledged to double funding for dementia research to £160 million a year by 2025.
Researchers have made amazing progress in the diagnosis and potential treatment of diseases that lead to dementia, a condition estimated to affect more than 55 million people worldwide.
Scientists have identified potential “biomarkers” – biochemical signs in the body – that may indicate that a person is in the early stages of dementia or is at high risk of developing it.
These signals represent a “huge step forward in neuroscience,” McKiernan said, adding that the UK's efforts in dementia could help accelerate work to identify other biomarkers. She added that it can be used with trial participants to monitor the development of the disease.
The comments come as the UK's regulatory body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, evaluates the first treatments to target the plaque that causes Alzheimer's disease, the biggest cause of dementia.
The drugs, developed by Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai and US company Eli Lilly, treat the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain that cause the disease, rather than treating symptoms like current treatments.
McKernan said it is likely that more anti-dementia drugs will be developed, drawing parallels with how cancer treatments have evolved.
“We are about 20 years behind cancer,” she said. “I think the number of specific drugs we have available to treat cancer and the way patients are treated with different drugs at different stages of the disease will be the future of dementia.”
Hilary Evans, co-chair of the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission and chief executive of Alzheimer's Research UK, said new treatments being developed for Alzheimer's offered the best hope yet of ending “the devastation this disease wreaks on people and society”. “Now we must maintain this momentum and ensure the UK is at the forefront of tackling dementia for years to come.”
