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The different neurodegenerative conditions that cause dementia share some fundamental disease mechanisms and characteristics.
These parallels form the basis for our scientific themes – networks which bring together researchers and clinicians from across our centres and beyond.
By sharing expertise through strategic meetings and focused symposia, we help build collaborative projects that address the biggest questions in dementia research.
Additionally, our disease interest groups convene experts from discovery research to the clinic, encouraging an integrated approach to our studies on dementia.
For our brain to function properly, neurones must communicate to one another through intricate structures known as synapses. It is thought that dysfunction here is one of the earliest events in neurodegenerative disease. Developing treatments to protect synapses may therefore be an effective way to prevent lasting damage to the brain.
Our synapse theme brings together expertise and skill sets to answer major questions and unlock new therapeutic and diagnostic opportunities. These include why some synapses are more vulnerable to immune cells than others, and how toxic proteins cause dysfunction and subsequent cell death.
We are only now starting to reveal the wonderful diversity of synapses that connect our neurones. If we are to find ways to prevent synapse loss in dementia, the research community must probe these differences at all levels using a range of techniques and approaches.
Led by the UK DRI at Imperial, the Multi-‘omics Atlas Project (MAP) is an ambitious initiative to track the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease at every stage of illness and across the multiple brain regions affected.
Working with Brains for Dementia Research, the UK Brain Banks Network and Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre, the multi-disciplinary team of national and international researchers are using an unprecedented range of techniques to probe brain tissue at different stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
The samples and data collected will become an invaluable resource for the research community, and a launchpad for innovative new studies to rapidly improve our understanding of the biological processes behind dementia.
To find drug targets for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, it is crucial that we gain a greater understanding of how the disease changes as it develops. This hugely collaborative project is a major step towards achieving that goal.
Recent scientific and technological advances have made it possible for institutes like the UK DRI to generate huge volumes of data. We believe this could hold the key to better understanding of the diseases that cause dementia, and unlock new approaches to diagnosis, treatment, care and prevention. To fully exploit this vast data asset, we need to draw on the expertise of those in informatics, data science and artificial intelligence.
We’ve partnered with the Deep Dementia Phenotyping (DEMON) Network which brings together over 1000 scientists, clinicians and industry partners. This collaboration will accelerate the transformation of data into translatable knowledge that can help us find treatments and develop new technologies for those living with dementia.
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