Researchers led by Prof Kei Cho, UK DRI at King’s, have uncovered an important signalling pathway that links amyloid beta with disrupted neuronal communication in Alzheimer’s disease. The study, published this month in Brain Communications, identifies a potential target for disease-modifying treatments in moderate stages of the condition.
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New research by Prof David Klenerman, UK DRI Group Leader at Cambridge, and involving two other UK DRI centres, has provided better understanding of toxic protein aggregates and the disease mechanisms by which they cause damage to the brain. This new knowledge may help with the development of effective treatments for those living with dementia.
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A team of academics from the UK DRI has worked with GPs, infectious diseases experts, a geriatric clinical outreach team and Local Authority colleagues to undertake a coronavirus outbreak investigation in four London nursing homes. The study highlights high rates of infection and death from the virus, and urges specific, tailored measures to manage spread of the disease.
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Dr Sarah Marzi is an Edmond and Lily Safra Research Fellow and UK DRI Career Development Fellow at the UK DRI at Imperial, using genome-wide genetic and epigenetic techniques as well as innovative bioinformatic and statistical approaches to investigate epigenetic dysregulation in disease. In this Q&A, Aisling McGarry, Research Technician in UK DRI at Imperial, talks to Sarah about her interest in epigenomics and Parkinson's disease, and her experience with working from home during this period.
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It has been announced today that Prof Bart De Strooper, UK DRI Director, is one of fifty leading biomedical and health scientists elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship for his work investigating dementia.
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Looking back to the start of the year, few of us would have predicted the extraordinary times we are currently living through. Even for scientists, who are acutely aware of the power wielded by the natural world, the transformation brought about by this invisible invader has been startling. Here we look at some of the ways that UK DRI researchers have been responding to the crisis.
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Prof Valentina Escott-Price, UK DRI Group Leader at Cardiff, studied mathematics at St Petersburg University in Russia before embarking on her PhD in statistics at Cardiff University. She has helped discover 11 new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer’s disease. Here she talks to us about big data, working in high dimensional space and the challenge of persuading others to share their datasets.
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We are thrilled to announce the 10 awardees in the second round of the UK DRI Pilot Projects programme – an initiative designed to encourage UK DRI post docs to consider new and innovative ways to tackle dementia.
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To meet the challenge of bringing together skill sets and common interests across the institute’s dispersed network, we have developed the official UK DRI research themes. To learn more, we spoke to Research Theme Project Manager at HQ, Dr Sarmi Sri.
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Dr Nathan Skene, a UK DRI researcher based at Imperial, is part of a team that has discovered that cells from the gut's nervous system are involved in Parkinson's disease, indicating that the disease may start there.
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Professor Henrik Zetterberg, a Group Leader at our centre at UCL, is part of a team at the University of Gothenburg that has developed a new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease.
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A robotic testing platform developed in just nine days by UK DRI researchers could substantially increase the UK’s capacity to test people for coronavirus.
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UK DRI and Eisai, one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical companies, are delighted to announce the first recipients for the post-doctoral research programme on dementia. This first-of-its-kind industry collaboration for the UK DRI aims to deliver innovative research that translates into improvements in diagnosis, treatment and prevention of all types of dementia.
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The coronavirus pandemic represents an unprecedented challenge. The situation is rapidly evolving. We will update this page with the latest information relevant to UK DRI activities.
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Researchers led by Prof Giampietro Schiavo, UK DRI at UCL, have used two new mouse models of motor neurone disease (MND) to show that early disease mechanisms may differ depending on the causative gene. Deficits in transport along nerve cells preceded symptoms in one but not the other model, suggesting that therapeutics may have to be tailored to individuals according to their genes.
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We are delighted to announce that artist Annie Cattrell has been appointed as the public artist for the state-of-the-art research facility which will house over 500 scientists and clinicians from the UK DRI, UCL’s Queen Square Institute of Neurology (IoN) and UCLH’s National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN).
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Researchers led by UK DRI Centre Director Prof Julie Williams at Cardiff, have unveiled a new perspective on the potential triggers and drivers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Our growing knowledge of risk genes suggests multiple factors behind the condition, and clues for treatment development.
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A new UK DRI initiative to create an ‘atlas’ of the brain at different stages of Alzheimer’s disease is set to rapidly improve our understanding of the processes that lead to people developing the illness.
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Dr William McEwan, recently appointed Group Leader at UK DRI at Cambridge, has received the 2019 Lister Institute Research Prize for his work exploring protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases, and exploiting the immune system to develop treatments for these conditions.
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At the end of January, the lab of Prof Adrian Isaacs hosted the 2nd European C9orf72 workshop on at the UCL Queen Square Institute for Neurology in London. The focus of the meeting was to present novel unpublished data in order to increase collaboration and research impact across Europe.
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