King's Health Partners secures largest ever single grant from Alzheimer's Research Trust
09 December 2010
Professor Simon Lovestone, Director of Research, King's Health Partners (KHP), has secured funding of over £1 million from the Alzheimer’s Research Trust (ART) which includes ART's largest ever single grant of £715,000.
KHP is beginning ambitious new studies that will attempt to identify genes that increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s and develop a blood test to diagnose the disease.
With the grant of £715,000 Professor Lovestone and his team at King's College London Institute of Psychiatry and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, will use advanced techniques to look for a simple blood test that could diagnose Alzheimer’s at its earliest stages. He also aims to design a test that could predict and measure how the disease progresses. As well as helping those affected access care and treatments much earlier, a reliable test would also make clinical trials for potential new drugs much more effective, by ensuring they are tested on the right group of people. This funding significantly expands the existing programme of research into Alzheimer’s at King’s.
Professor Lovestone said: 'Whenever we hear about people with Alzheimer’s, it is always apparent that the disease started five to ten years before it was diagnosed. If we are to find an effective treatment, and carry out studies to find new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, then we must have a way of diagnosing it much earlier. We have already made big strides in this area, and I have real hope that this study will bring some positive results
.'
With the further grant of £346,000 Professor Lovestone and a team of researchers across the UK, led by Professor John Hardy at University College London’s Institute of Neurology, will sequence every gene in 500 people with Alzheimer’s, and compare them with the genes of healthy people. Their work will reveal the genetic changes responsible for Alzheimer’s, giving doctors a better chance of predicting who is at risk of developing the disease.
Professor Hardy said: 'Britain has played a leading role in research into the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease, and already we are beginning to make real progress. This study should give us a much greater understanding of the causes of Alzheimer’s, and should also tell us more about how we can intervene and stop the disease progressing.'
Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: 'We are delighted to be supporting these important and promising projects. These grants have only been made possible thanks to the efforts of our many supporters, whose donations we rely on to fund our research. With 820,000 people with dementia in the UK, much more investment into studies such as these is essential if we are to offer hope to those affected by this devastating condition.'
KHP is a major collaboration between three of the country’s most successful NHS Foundation Trusts - Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley, and one of the world’s leading research universities, King’s College London. KHP is one of only five Academic Health Science Centres (AHSC) in the UK. The objective of AHSCs is to break down barriers so that world-class research finds its way more swiftly, effectively and systematically to improve healthcare services for patients