UK dementia adviser wants half a million volunteers for clinical trials

The UK should recruit half a million people to help it become a hub for clinical trials of the next generation of dementia drugs, the top scientific adviser to a new government-backed initiative on neurodegenerative disorders has urged.

A big database of potential participants would make the country an attractive location for pharma companies to carry out tests, accelerating the UK’s access to medicines and providing potential treatments for its almost 1mn dementia sufferers, said neuroscientist Ruth McKernan.

McKernan will chair the scientific advisory board of the UK’s new Neurodegeneration Initiative. It is part of an official push to be announced on Wednesday to capitalise on scientific breakthroughs that for the first time promise to bring diagnostics and therapies for the debilitating condition within reach.

“If we’re able to accelerate how patients get into clinical trials and how those clinical trials get conducted, then it will encourage pharma companies to come here,” McKernan told the Financial Times, adding “it would be great to have half a million” volunteers.

“It will encourage them to make sure the medicines are available here and it’s a route for people to get tested with the new medicines in development.”

The Neurodegeneration Initiative will have the job of promoting more and quicker trials of potential dementia diagnostics and treatments. McKernan is a former head of Innovate UK and currently a venture partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors.

The government is aiming to establish a cohort of 20,000 pre-screened people, deemed to be at risk of dementia or with mild cognitive impairment, who could be fast-tracked into clinical trials.

McKernan did not set a timeline for reaching the half a million prospective clinical trial cohort, which she said was a personal view and not an official target.

The government is also pledging £6mn in funding for UK early-stage biotechs working on diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases and facilitating clinical trials. It has pledged to double funding for dementia research to £160mn a year by 2025.

Researchers have made striking advances on both potential diagnostics and treatments for diseases leading to dementia, a condition estimated to affect more than 55mn people worldwide.

Scientists have identified potential “biomarkers” — biochemical signs in the body — that may indicate a person is in the early stages of dementia or at an elevated risk of developing it.

The signals are a “big step forward in neuroscience”, McKernan said, adding that the UK dementia effort could help accelerate work on identifying other biomarkers. These could be used with trial participants to monitor disease progression, she added.

The comments come as the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is assessing the first treatments to target a plaque that triggers Alzheimer’s, the biggest cause of dementia.

The drugs, developed by Japanese pharma company Eisai and US company Eli Lilly, tackle the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain that trigger the disease, rather than address symptoms like current treatments.

McKernan said it was likely that further anti-dementia drugs would be developed, drawing parallels with how cancer treatments had evolved.

“We’re about 20 years behind cancer,” she said. “I think the number of specific drugs we have in cancer and the way that patients are treated with different drugs at different stages of the disease will be the future for dementia.”

New treatments being developed for Alzheimer’s offered the best hope yet of ending “the devastation this condition inflicts on people and society”, said Hilary Evans, co-chair of the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission and chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK. “Now we must keep up this momentum and ensure the UK is at the forefront of tackling dementia for years to come.’’