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Alzheimer’s Research UK has announced its largest ever investment in dementia research, with £9.5m awarded to support 25 new projects across the UK. The funding will support work aimed at improving understanding, diagnosis and treatment of the diseases that cause dementia.
The charity said the newly funded projects span the full research pathway, from early ideas to clinical research that could help bring potential treatments closer to people affected by dementia. The projects were selected through a review process involving the charity’s Research Committee and Clinical Committee, bringing together scientists, clinicians and people with lived experience of dementia.
The latest awards take Alzheimer’s Research UK’s total investment in dementia research to more than £270m since its first grant award in 1998. The charity has now supported more than 1,450 research projects and worked with over 3,400 researchers collaborating across more than 110 countries.
Supporting new ideas
As part of the funding round, Alzheimer’s Research UK has invested more than £680,000 in 10 Pilot Projects. These shorter studies are designed to help researchers test new ideas and generate the evidence needed to support larger studies in future.
One of these projects is led by Scott Miners at the University of Bristol. His team will use advanced 3D imaging to study how blood vessels in the brain change in Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, comparing these changes with healthy brains. The work aims to improve understanding of how blood vessel damage contributes to dementia, with possible benefits for future treatment and prevention approaches.
Backing larger research projects
More than £4m has also been awarded through the charity’s Major Project scheme. These awards are designed to support larger studies that need more time, scale and resources to address complex questions in dementia research.
One Major Project is led by Anto Praveen Rajkumar Rajamani at the University of Nottingham. The team is working to improve a blood test that can distinguish dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer’s disease. By using blood biomarkers and artificial intelligence, the researchers hope to refine the test and validate it in NHS patients, helping to reduce misdiagnosis and support more appropriate care.
Building clinical research capacity
Alzheimer’s Research UK has also awarded £2.6m to support six new Clinical Fellowships. These awards are intended to invest in future dementia clinical research leaders and help promising ideas move closer to testing in real world settings. The charity said further details about these Clinical Fellowships will be shared in a separate announcement.
The announcement reflects continued investment across the dementia research pipeline, from discovery science and new diagnostic approaches to clinical research and researcher development. For the dementia research community, the scale of this funding represents a significant boost for projects seeking to improve how dementia is understood, diagnosed and treated.
