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The latest funding from Alzheimer’s Society supports 13 new awards, with 10 led by early career researchers across a spectrum of dementia research.
Alzheimer’s Society is delighted to announce £4.9m through the 2024/25 funding call to support ground-breaking research. Awards have been made to advance diagnosis, understand causes, develop new treatments and advise on practices to ensure the best care for people living with dementia. This year we have funded three new Dementia Research Leader Fellows, experienced dementia researchers who have built on several successful years of research and are ready to begin fully independent careers, and five new Postdoctoral Fellows, who will be beginning to build their independent portfolio.
You can learn more about our Fellows below and through their Dementia Researcher profiles, and about all the awards in this funded call on Alzheimer’s Society’s website.
Dementia Research Leader Fellows
The Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Research Leader Fellowship is a five-year award designed to support researchers as they establish independent dementia research programmes. The award is designed to directly tackle key barriers by providing stable funding, avoiding the uncertainty of short-term awards while providing opportunities for research and professional development, including the potential for funding for a PhD student to embed supervision and mentorship into the programme.
Meet our 2024/25 DRL Fellows!
Dr Cara Croft
Dr Cara Croft, Queen Mary University London
Determining the mechanisms of human tau pathology clearance to inform therapeutic development
Cara has developed a new approach to watch tau knots forming in real-time in mouse brain slices. This showed, for the first time, that tau knots can unravel on their own, Cara aims to understand this process to input into how treatments could speed tau unravelling up.
Dr Ian Harrison
Dr Ian Harrison, University College London
Enhancing Glymphatic Clearance of Propagating Tau: Therapeutic Potential in Dementia
Ian has established his research group studying brain clearance systems, through his Fellowship he will focus on the glymphatic system, which flushes waste proteins from the brain, including amyloid and tau that build up in Alzheimer’s disease. Ian will now define the therapeutic window of where boosting this process could prevent brain cell death.
Dr Devkee Vadukul
Dr Devkee Vadukul, Imperial College London
Heterogeneous protein aggregation in dementia: Revolutionising Diagnosis through Novel Molecular Insights
Through her Fellowship, Devkee will analyse how mixed protein aggregates form, both in patient tissue and in cell culture, and how they might be identified in a diagnostic test, to increase accurate diagnosis of mixed dementia.
Postdoctoral Fellows
The Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme allows exceptional early career researchers and final-year PhD students to apply for research funding to pursue a novel research idea and build their independent research portfolio. This four-year award has an early career researcher lead, supported by a senior research supervisor in the same institution, and can include additional career development opportunities including hosting an intern and heading overseas for a secondment to build networks and research skills.
Meet our 24/25 Postdoctoral Fellows!
Dr Paula Beltran Lobo
Dr Paula Beltran-Lobo, University of Edinburgh
Tau-mediated astrocyte reactivity: a path to vascular damage in dementia?
Paula’s Fellowship will establish whether tau directly impacts astrocytes, cells wrapped around blood vessels that transfer nutrients, and whether resulting damage to these cells drives vascular damage.
Dr Anshua Ghosh
Dr Anshua Ghosh, King’s College London
Uncovering a common mechanism underlying synapse loss across neurodegenerative diseases
Anshua will use in vitro techniques to understand how amyloid-β and α-synuclein interact causing synapse loss, a key pathology in many dementia types.
Dr Sasha Philbert
Dr Sasha Philbert, University of Manchester
What role does sodium play in vascular dementia?
Sasha has shown in postmortem studies that sodium levels are elevated in people with vascular dementia. He will now use MRI imaging to determine if sodium levels can be used as a biomarker to differentiate between vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Md Shafiqur Rahman
Dr Md Shafiqur Rahman, University of Cambridge
Biological, Health and Environmental Influences on Cognitive Trajectories in Cognitively Healthy Adults
Md Sahfiqur will study genetic, biological, health and environmental factors to identify similarities and differences between typical age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease determining measurable factors that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr Evelina Valionyte
Dr Evelina Valionyte, University of Plymouth
Therapeutic peptides to tackle p62 droplet-based autophagic defect in Alzheimer’s Disease
Through her Fellowship, Evelina will assess the role of caspase-6 in p62 droplet-based autophagy. Evelina has shown caspase-6 cleaves p62 because of cellular stress, which could result in an increase in protein aggregates, such as those in Alzheimer’s disease.
Find out more about research funding opportunities from Alzheimer’s Society
Dementia Researcher
