New research centre on dementia opens its doors in London
One million people in the world will be affected by dementia in 2020. If researchers have been hard at work looking for effective treatments, the existing ones will neither reverse nor stop the disease. Most will only reduce the symptoms and slow the disease's progression, and there is a strong need for new treatment options that would tackle this growing problem. In this context, the creation of a research centre administering new, experimental treatments could be game-changing. These plans were set in motion in 2011 through the largest single award ever made by the Wolfson Foundation in the United Kingdom. The new Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre (LWENC) opened its doors this week and is due to receive its first patients in early 2014. 'Our aim is to support excellence in science, medicine, health, education and the arts. With this award we wanted to highlight the fact that research into neurodegenerative diseases is relatively underfunded,' said Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of The Wolfson Foundation. The EUR 24 million research centre will carry out first-in-human studies. Its staff will investigate exciting new therapies for the likes of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - as well as a range of other forms of dementia - with immunotherapy of Alzheimer's disease being its first focus. 'At the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre we aim to speed up the development and validation of treatments, and open an earlier window to patients through which we can provide treatment and try to minimise the damage caused by neurodegenerative disease,' explains Nick Fox, Professor of Neurology at UCL and a Principal Investigator in the new Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre. The Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre will be located at the heart of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a national referral centre for patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases. In addition to being able to work with the hospital's specialist clinics and patients, scientists at the Centre will also benefit from UCL's wealth of expertise and knowledge in neuroscience. In addition to this experimental neurology centre, the Wolfson Foundation's funding will help establish a new education and research programme to provide unique training opportunities for future generations of neurodegenerative disease researchers.For more information, please visit:LWENChttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/lwenc
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