Newcastle University has a 40 year track record of international excellence and achievement in brain ageing and dementia - Professor David Burn responds to the Government announcement of extra funding for dementia research.

Responding to David Cameron’s announcement that the UK will double its annual funding for dementia research from £66m in 2015 to £132m by 2025, David Burn, Professor of Movement Disorder Neurology and Director of Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, commented:

“The Government’s announcement is a great boost to dementia research. We all need to step up to the plate and come up with new drugs and treatments to benefit patients with dementia. 

“This will come about through good science, good research, and possibly a bit of luck too in terms of discoveries.  We can deliver improved diagnosis, but ultimately the public want better treatments, and more research funding will go a long way towards achieving this.”

Newcastle’s research is interdisciplinary, on the major causes of dementia in later life with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment and ultimately preventing such conditions. It has the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing and Chronic Disease and the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Resrearch Unit on Lewy Body dementia.

It has also been awarded funding for an MRC Centre in Brain Ageing and Frailty and funding from MRC and ABBUK to support the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource (NBTR, 'brain bank').

Newcastle is recognised as a world-leading centre into these complex and disabling conditions which affect 160,000 people in the UK. Through the involvement of highly experienced clinicians and scientists the NIHR Newcastle BRU aims to improve our understanding of key disease symptoms and develop improved means of diagnosis, monitoring and treatment that will result in significant advances in patient management.

published on: 11 December 2013