Podcast – Race Against Dementia Fellowships

Voice Over:

Welcome to the NIHR Dementia Researcher podcast brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early career dementia researches across the world.

Adam Smith:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher podcast. In our fortnightly podcast, we talk to early career dementia researchers about their research and careers, sharing knowledge advice, and hopefully some inspiration. I’m Adam Smith. I’m the program director in the NIHR National Director for Dementia Research working at University College London. And I’m delighted to be your host for the show.

Adam Smith:

This week we’re going to be talking about fellowships, specifically the rather unique and special fellowships funded by Race Against Dementia and delivered in partnership with Alzheimer’s Research UK. So I’m delighted to welcome this week’s guests. Race Against Dementia, chief executive, Dr. Penny Moyle. Hello Penny.

Dr Penny Moyle:

Hi Adam, and thanks for having us.

Adam Smith:

And research fellow, Dr. Claire Durham from The University of Edinburgh. Hi, Claire.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Hi Adam. Lovely to be here.

Adam Smith:

Well, thank you both for joining us today. Penny, could I perhaps come to you first to ask you to introduce yourself, and perhaps tell us a little bit about Race Against Dementia and how it came about?

Dr Penny Moyle:

Sure. I’m Penny Moyle. I’m the CEO of Race Against Dementia. I’ve been with the charity for two and a half years, I think. Although the charity has been around slightly longer than that. It was founded in 2016, by Sir Jackie Stewart, the three time world champion Grand Prix driver. And it was inspired by the fact that his wife, Helen, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

Dr Penny Moyle:

And when that happened, Sir Jackie and the family thought, well, they’ll get the best medical treatment available, and that will help that it worked for them with other health issues that, that experienced. But of course they discovered the truth, which is that there are no disease modifying treatments available for any form of dementia. And so Race Against Dementia was set up to change that, to work towards breakthroughs that are so desperately needed in this area.

Adam Smith:

Fantastic. Thank you, Penny. And Claire, I know you’ve been on the show before, but could you perhaps introduce yourself and tell us about your research?

Dr Claire Durrant:

All right. So my name’s Dr. Claire Durrant and I am a Race Against Dementia fellow working at The University of Edinburgh. So I’ve just completed my first year of the fellowship, out of five years. So it’s a lovely long fellowship with lots of time to explore the questions that we want to ask. So personally, my research is looking at understanding why the connections between nerve cells called synapsis die in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, such as frontal temporal dementia.

Dr Claire Durrant:

And I’m particularly interested in the role of a protein called tau and whether or not the action of tau aggregation throughout disease is part of the reason we see these structures die and how we can stop that from happening. So one of the model systems I’m using is using thin sections of living brain, both mouse and human from surgical resections, and looking at how changes to tau affect synapsis and how we can then look at trying to prevent that happening in disease.

Adam Smith:

That’s really interesting. I only know more about this because of course you and I spoke on the [inaudible 00:03:37] I think some of our-

Dr Claire Durrant:

We did. Yeah.

Adam Smith:

… listeners will have picked up on. If you didn’t catch that, you can go to [inaudible 00:03:42] and there’s links there to all the videos where Claire talks about this some more. I think the fascinating part of that work is, is that you’re working on living tissue that’s actually been, donated by people isn’t it, rather than a post-mortem tissue or grown in STEM cells.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Yeah. When you say donated living tissue, it sounds [inaudible 00:04:06] as though you’re going to go around taking it from people. And in fact that is absolutely not the case in sense that we take it from people who’ve donated tissue that would be removed as a waste product of normal routine neurosurgical procedures. So things like tumour surgeries, where you have to access the tumour, which is deep inside the brain, but in order to get to that, you’d have to remove a surface layer of normal tissue, a bit like a keyhole surgery in order to be able to physically get to the tumour.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Likewise, some people for epilepsy surgeries have parts of the brain removed, and again, the overlying pieces of brain required to be removed in that process. So with permission from the patient and obviously with the surgeons and all the ethics being sorted in that way, we can then take that piece of tissue to the lab, cut it into very thin slices and keep tiny sections of living human brain alive in dishes, which allow us then to test how drugs and different treatments affect real living human brain cells, which as you can imagine, it’s very hard to do in any other way.

Adam Smith:

And I suppose particularly the challenge about keeping that alive as well, because I guess donations like this aren’t something you can collect every day.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely not. So again, brain surgery in itself is quite an extreme thing to have to undergo in your life, and the types of brain surgery where we can get tissue that isn’t part of the tumour or isn’t part of the epileptic focus, which will then go off to diagnostics or part of the patient’s care, are even rarer still. So at the moment, it’s once a month to once every two months, we’re lucky enough to get tissue. But certainly as more surgeons hear about this and we get more people involved, it’s becoming a more frequent thing.

Adam Smith:

So you’re building up, start to build up a repository of more tissue samples to keep you going full-time and for the next four years, I guess.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely. And combining this research with things like post-mortem research, where we can validate our findings and genuine Alzheimer’s cases and also alongside mouse model work means that the toolkit of different models we have mean that we can take advantages from all of them. And we’re certainly kept busy at all points, even if we have a break between [inaudible 00:06:17] of human samples coming in.

Adam Smith:

And what are the advantages of using tissue that is collected in this way over post-mortem tissue or STEM cell model?

Dr Claire Durrant:

So obviously, post-mortem tissue has the advantage that it would be genuine Alzheimer’s disease cases. So the brain tissue that we take from living humans is usually not Alzheimer’s disease. It is usually, like I said, tumour or epilepsy, but with the normal tissue surrounding there. Obviously despite the fact it’s not Alzheimer’s disease, it is real adult living nerve cells. Induced pluripotent STEM cells are fantastic. You can get human neurons from those.

Dr Claire Durrant:

But we’re not really sure how mature they are. In fact, I think it takes several years, even for tower tau isoforms to get what we’d find in an adult human. So again, the level of how much that would relate to a process like Alzheimer’s, which is an adult neurodegenerative disease, it’s harder to know. But together all of these models are very powerful. And the IPS cells are very well validated now.

Dr Claire Durrant:

But certainly alongside validating with human living brain cells in an environment where they’ve grown throughout their life in the right environment with the right cell types, it’s a fantastic way of exploring adult human cells in a way that’s pretty difficult to do in any other format.

Adam Smith:

You make a good case for that. You could see how, because there aren’t many people working with this particular tissue at the moment, I imagine. Are there?

Dr Claire Durrant:

No. It’s certainly a restricted technique at the moment in the sense that, A, you need access to the tissue, but also it requires quite a lot of expertise in how we keep them. And usually it’s people like me who’ve come from slice cultures in mouse models, and then bringing that more into the human. So, short term human brain slices where you keep them for 24 hours and do electrophysiology, they’re more common. But being able to keep them alive for a bit longer in order to see long-term drug effects is certainly something you need to have a bit of expertise. And so, which is certainly developing around the country and globally as well.

Adam Smith:

This sounds like something we could dedicate a webinar to spread.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely.

Adam Smith:

… the knowledge and encourage others to consider this type of work in the future. So just coming back to the fellowship, you’re approaching the end of your first year, which I guess wasn’t really the year you expected. How have you managed because your work is very specifically lab based, how have you managed to keep going in the last year or last six months?

Dr Claire Durrant:

I mean, absolutely. It’s a question we commonly get asked. So like everyone in the country from the end of March till the end of June, we were locked out of the lab completely. But as many scientists know, being locked physically out of the lab, even as a lab based scientist does not mean research stops. In fact, so for me, it meant I had a lot of data fortunately. I got off the ground quite quickly when I started in Edinburgh. So, I already had things like images to analyse, data to start synthesizing and working out my next experiments. So that took up a lot of time.

Dr Claire Durrant:

And in that time, I also thought, “Well, I’m going to really start thinking about my hypothesis and really explore some of the ideas around that.” One of the things that I did was, alongside a first year PhD student, we actually got together and we wrote a paper where we analysed 600 papers, which were published around the world, all about the proteins that we know, well, we think we know are toxic in Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Do they have any function besides being toxic? I mean, evolution tells us that must be the case because we found that tau protein, for example, hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And we see the same protein existing in sharks. Likewise amyloid beta has been found as early as C anatomies. So we’re not talking about strange proteins that have popped into existence to cause disease. They have been around since very early in time.

Dr Claire Durrant:

And what the student that I found is as suspected, when you really look for it in the literature, there are case after case after case arguing that actually these proteins have important normal functions. And actually these normal functions could be disrupted both in Alzheimer’s disease and similar dementias. But also if we target drugs in the wrong way. For example, if we just blank it remove all of tau, we might actually be causing more problems than we’re solving.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So that was really interesting as it helps synthesize a lot of ideas. We got the paper published in Acta Neuropathologica, during lockdown and it’s been read over 4,000 times in the two months it’s been published. We’ve had lots of emails coming in asking about it and I think it’s really helped synthesize both my ideas, but also hopefully challenging a bit of the dogma that exists out there, which is what Race Against Dementia is really seeking to do.

Adam Smith:

That’s fantastic. And that’s a paper that otherwise might not have seen the light of day at this time.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely not. I mean, it was a mammoth effort from this PhD student, Sarah Cannon, who’s incredibly talented. And we worked together on Zoom. We never actually met in person the whole time, but we divide and conquer, worked through the papers, started in huge databases of the findings from different ones. And then synthesized a report where we’re saying, “Well, actually these proteins we think are toxic. Here are 50 different ways in which they actually serve normal roles in the brain and how we need to protect that in therapy design.” So hopefully it’s given us a lot of food for thought, but also the wider field, I think as well.

Adam Smith:

That’s exciting. And I was about to bring my next question was, what’s exciting you most about your work right now? But to be honest, it sounds like you’ve already answered that question, because I think that, that in itself sounds quite exciting. So what’s the potential, what are you looking at in the next six months now that you are back in the lab?

Dr Claire Durrant:

So now that back in the lab, I’m really trying to accelerate on the actual working with the human brain tissue, and also along with the collaborators I have who are in drug development industry. So I have two industrial collaborators, one based in the US and I’m also here. I have the [inaudible 00:12:18] Drug Discovery Institute. So a subsidiary about Alzheimer’s Research UK, who are looking to see what therapeutics we can develop.

Dr Claire Durrant:

And alongside both of them, we’re trying to test some of the therapies to see how they affect synapsis under different conditions. And that’s really my next big target to say, well, actually let’s really look at some therapies and optimize them for certain conditions. So certainly the next six months, that’s where my head’s going to be at, optimizing human brain slices and actually testing some drugs.

Adam Smith:

And I imagine your funder will be excited by that. Which brings me back to you, Penny, and the fellowships. And it’s really exciting to hear about, Claire’s work, which is really only possible because of the RAD, the Race Against Dementia fellowship program. But of course, this is what inspired me to want to talk to you both in talking to Claire in the [inaudible 00:13:16] was that I got a picture that this isn’t just your average run of the mill distribution of funding, that there’s more to a Race Against Dementia fellowship. Could you maybe tell us what makes it unique?

Dr Penny Moyle:

Sure. So when I joined Race Against Dementia, it was really clear that the trustees wanted to do something that was a bit different, that was innovative, wanted to encourage some outside of the box thinking if you like. But also really wanted to focus on early career researchers, bringing more people into the race as we would stay.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So I fairly quickly met some colleagues at Alzheimer’s Research UK to talk about what they were doing. And obviously they knew the space much better than I did, but were very helpful in thinking about how we could work together to create something that would hit the spot. And so we settled on a fellowship program fairly quickly, but we wanted it to be a really attractive fellowship that would bring in the best and brightest of the field, people like Claire.

Dr Penny Moyle:

And we knew there were some good fellowships out there. So, welcome trust and MRC offered some brilliant fellowships. But they tend to be available only to… They’re available to anybody, but they tend to be secured by people who have done a couple of postdocs already and have a longer track record. And we wanted to provide something for people who were fairly and immediately post PhD. So we restrict applications to people who are within three years of completion of their PhD. So they really are in the early, early career researchers.

Dr Penny Moyle:

The other thing is we’ve made it five years rather than three. So that’s quite unusual for this stage of somebody’s career. So it gives people a bit more time to be able to try out something that might take a bit longer, might need to fail a few times before they get it right with a new technique or might need to experiment with a few different techniques before they hit on the winning formula that’s going to enable their research.

Dr Penny Moyle:

And if you’ve got five years, you have a bit more time to do that. Whereas, if you’re on a three-year fellowship, we spend the third year applying for the next fellowship. And that means you have to have results pretty early on. So we wanted to be able to give people a little more freedom than they might normally get in the standard three-year fellowship.

Dr Penny Moyle:

The other part of Race Against Dementia was this big idea which really came from Sir Jackie, is about injecting Formula 1 attitudes into dementia research. So his experience of Formula 1 led him to believe that there’s some different ways of doing things out there in the world that maybe if we brought some of those into the lab, into dementia research, we might be able to speed up progress and get to some solutions more quickly.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So that’s, I think the other side of the Race Against Dementia program is there is really quite an extensive development program, that we’re in fact ourselves developing as we go to think about what can we learn from Formula 1 that can maybe be useful for our fellows and actually for the people they’re working with and their labs, their colleagues, their professors, that might be able to make a difference in just the way we go about doing research.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So that’s started early on. So when Claire first started her fellowship program, we kicked off with a day where we visited Red Bull Racing factory and got a bit of an insight into how a Formula 1 factory looks. We later visited the McLaren factory, which is an amazing facility. So getting a bit of an insight into what Formula 1 looks like, but possibly more importantly, we then sat down with some people who’ve made a study of Formula 1.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So we have a professor from Cranfield, who’s working with us, who’s looked at what makes for a successful Formula 1 team and how can those lessons be applied in other organizations. So that’s Prof Mark Jenkins. He’s working with us to help us see what we can extract from Formula 1 and apply.

Dr Penny Moyle:

The first things we really noticed were things about collaboration, teamwork, and leadership. But they all sound a bit like motherhood and apple pie. Of course, they have good things to have, but how do you instil them? If there’s more to it than just saying, you guys should collaborate. You should do that differently. So what we’ve been putting together is essentially a leadership development program. So it’s not unlike the future leaders program that exists elsewhere. It’s not unlike some of the high potential programs I’ve seen work in other commercial organizations, but it’s really bespoke.

Dr Penny Moyle:

It’s focused just on the four fellows we have at the moment. We will have a few more over time. But it’s leaving us actually to experiment, to try out some things, see how they work, adapt, evolve, try it out again. So, Claire and I want to talk a bit more about these, but I’ll just list the things that we’ve been doing. So we’ve had some lessons in leadership. They’ve had presentation training from somebody who works with top athletes.

Dr Penny Moyle:

We have had performance coaching from a group called Hinsta, who again, worked with top athletes and top people in the corporate world. We’re going to do a whole lot on teamwork in 2021. So really giving the fellows the benefits that they might not otherwise get just in a run of the mill fellowship. Claire, do you want to talk to some of those things because you’ve been on the receiving end?

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely. And I think this is exactly right. This is the Race Against Dementia difference. So aside from the five years, which is unbelievable and exceptional at the career stage we’re at, I really feel they’re wanting to develop us as humans, not just as lab monkeys doing dementia research. They want us to develop as future leaders, and that is incredibly clear in all of the opportunities that we’ve been given.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So just to pick some out the air, because we could talk for hours just on this. For example, the Hinsta Performance training is effectively a life coach that we get to chat to one-on-one once a month, to discuss everything from stress, how we’re sleeping, how diet can impact our mood and impacts the way that we work. And it’s not a case that they’re expecting us to be running on a treadmill, checking our vital signs. It’s absolutely not about that.

Dr Claire Durrant:

It’s about, for the lifestyles that we lead, how can we be feeling the best that we possibly can, to get what we want out of both life and our work. And all of us have noticed a huge difference from small things like that. And I can’t think of any scheme, junior or senior, or even to be honest, top professors at top universities having access to things like that, where not only are we caring about the science, we’re also caring about the development of the people that we’re putting into it.

Adam Smith:

I mean, that really is fantastic, because even institutions don’t really look after their own people in exactly the same way. But this is something you can’t help, but think that if that was spread more widely, for the people that worked there, they’d stay there longer. We wouldn’t be losing people to out of the field or out of science altogether because they’d be inspired to want to stay.

Adam Smith:

I think it’s interesting as well because there are synergies aren’t there between Formula 1 and science in so much as, when we talked earlier about teamwork and things, of course, teams in science is quite tricky because of course there is always that underlying competitive nature in that, being secretive between one lab to another, which is very similar in Formula 1, I guess, one team is very secretive. They cover their designs and what they’re working on to other teams, but work together as a group. Is that the things that you’re translating across? Is this about attitude and psychology as well as some of those behaviours?

Dr Penny Moyle:

It’s definitely about attitude and psychology. And I think that the context is a little different. So there are elements of both collaboration and competitiveness in both fields, but they play out quite differently, I think. I think there’s a lot more potential within the dementia research world to be more collaborative. It’s not like you’re in a literal race in the way that Formula 1 are. But actually we’ve seen collaboration across Formula 1 teams, in their different places where you might not expect that. So, we do know that that is an important feature for human endeavour and definitely want to be encouraged in dementia research. And-

Adam Smith:

[inaudible 00:21:54]. Carry on.

Dr Penny Moyle:

I think the thing that we’ll be focusing on, particularly in the next six to 12 months with our dementia researchers, is the collaboration you would expect and hope that would happen, which is how they work most closely with their colleagues. And I’m not saying that there are problems at the moment, but there are always to and fro of different personalities in any work group and thinking through those kinds of things about how do we get the best out of each other, how do we communicate in ways that will make sense to the person on the receiving end, not just the person on the transmission end.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So those kinds of things we’re going to be looking at. And those will work, I think for our individual fellows with their current research groups, but I think they will also give them life lessons so that when they are heading up a new research group, at some point in their future, they will take some of these lessons forward. So they will become the most brilliant leaders in dementia research.

Adam Smith:

I think that sounds fantastic. And that competitiveness is something that whilst it might encourage people to excel, it can also be problematic, because if we had more transparency across what was going on, we would reduce the amount of duplication that we’d also probably progress more quickly. So it’s great to see that work. And I know Alzheimer’s Research UK are involved. We’ve mentioned them before. So how are ARUK involved in this?

Dr Penny Moyle:

So they do all the grunt work really. It’s very kind of them that they, if you want to apply, that the application processes are on their website. You can find it via our website and linking through, but they’re actually the people who are managing all that process. So they will take in all the applications. We use their grant review board to review all the applications and shortlist and interview and make sure that we’re doing everything all within the appropriate guidelines for any medical research charity, without us having to have the expense of setting up our own grant review board and doing all of that kind of thing. So that’s a great advantage for Race Against Dementia, because it means that more of the pounds that we raise go straight through to funding the science because Alzheimer’s Research UK are picking up a lot of that work.

Dr Penny Moyle:

They’re also, they have the network. You’re part of that network through whom we can tell everybody about the research fellowship. And so we can get applications from the widest range of people so as to bring in the best possible candidates. So they’ve been really helpful for us, in thinking about how to set it up in the first place, but actually also in the mechanics of ramping it, of setting up contracts, of doing the annual review, which Claire went through a couple of weeks ago, which is both, in one sense, the bit of a quality assurance so we can go back to actually our funders to say, yes, all your money’s been well-invested and look at the great progress they’re making. But actually it was also quite a nice conversation, I think Claire, between you-

Dr Claire Durrant:

Fascinating.

Dr Penny Moyle:

… and the other fellows and our scientific advisors, sharing ideas, sharing ideas about what might be next.

Adam Smith:

That’s wonderful. And is Sir Jackie himself involved in those? Does that add some pressure when he suddenly drops into the meeting and says, right I’m here, Claire, tell me what have you done with my money?

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely.

Dr Penny Moyle:

Well, yes and no. We’ve kept the two things a little bit separate. So we had first, a scientific review and we did keep that essentially to scientists. I was the only non-dementia person in the virtual room and really did not have much of a speaking part. I was there to learn. So we had that scientific part. And then we separately have had an annual review with our trustees. And [inaudible 00:25:46] separately again with some of our major donors. So it’s a slightly different conversation when you’re talking to people who are not dementia scientists. But they are every bit as interested and engaged in the work that Claire’s been doing.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely, and felt very supported by trustees. And like you said, having Sir Jackie sat in a meeting, listening and interested in your work, and he certainly really motivated for us all to do well, not just for his own personal situation, but he really sees that society as a whole has a problem that needs to be dealt with. And I really admire the tenacity with which he’s not just accepting that it’s a difficult problem and therefore could leave it to someone else.

Dr Claire Durrant:

He’s going, “No, I’ve dealt with difficult problems before, and I want to bring what I can and bring in other people with their own expertise to try and tackle it.” And I really admire his huge tenacity and huge forward thinking that he has that in his 80s, he’s saying I’m going to put my energy into a dementia research charity, which is incredible.

Adam Smith:

And I think, I mean, it’d be great to see more of this where you connect the people that are actually funding the research with the researchers that are doing the work, because I think it does help to understand and creates that connection that inspires them to want to keep going, that they can see progress. Because I think this is one of the challenges with science, isn’t it, that we take the money disappear and the results can take so long to come through until they’re then published in papers, which aren’t necessarily accessible. So well done. I mean, that sounds brilliant. And this is probably a bit of an awkward question to ask, and it might be a bit of a non-question given the conversation we’ve just had, but what did inspire you to apply for this in the first place, Claire?

Dr Claire Durrant:

I mean, for me, I really honestly was thought this was just the most amazing scheme I’d ever seen, A, the five years and the encouragement to really bring out of the box thinking, to bring in multiple collaborators, to go across multiple institutions, if you so wish. It was just a way that you could really basically say, well, what science would I want to do if I didn’t have money or time worries to do it?

Dr Claire Durrant:

Which, when you’re three years out of your PhD, that’s a phenomenal thing to be able to do. Most other fellowships, fantastic as they are, you are limited, as Penny said by three years, by relatively limited funding. And ultimately knowing that as we all know the process which you go through to apply for a fellowship takes at least six months. At least. You’re looking at more like eight, nine months by the time you factor in writing time and actually going through to the interview process, which eats into the end of your time.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So really a three-year fellowship is in fact a six month getting used to your new institution, one year looking for the next jobs and really a year and a half of proper downtime to do work. So for me, it was just an absolute, no brainer to say, well, I don’t know what my chances are of getting this, but this is absolutely the way I want to do research and move forward. And just the opportunities to be on science as well, with all of the extra career developments and things, whilst at the time it was fairly unknown what there’d be just the thought that there was going to be development beyond simply just going into the lab and being left alone for five years was hugely appealing to me.

Adam Smith:

And I think when we know we’ve argued this before as well in trying to create those longer term contracts. It helps us, it helps researchers as in their personal lives as well. I mean, if you want to go get a mortgage or settle in one place or do some of these things-

Dr Claire Durrant:

Absolutely.

Adam Smith:

… those longer contracts really do make a difference. I can’t help but think what about the engineering side of this? Because Formula 1 is fantastically innovative and has some amazing engineers and people behind it. I mean, obviously we’re only talking to you today, Claire, but you’ve got other fellows across the world as well. Does engineering competence part of this is have you managed to bring some of those people together with the researchers?

Dr Claire Durrant:

It’s something we’re really working on and would like to do. So right now, the four of us who are fellows, there are three of us who are quite primarily lab based, although Christie Hung in UCL, she’s doing some high throughput screening, which is quite technical with some of the machines they’ve got there. And then we have, Kara Croft, who’s working in Florida, who again, is doing some fantastic brain slice work and some really technical microscopy and imaging, which is just so impressive.

Dr Claire Durrant:

And then we have in Amsterdam and the Rochester clinic and Mayo, we have Alan Dix who is doing some amazing computational work. And again, she’s doing some stuff with MRI scanners and looking at thousands and thousands, thousands of images of patient brains. So at the moment, we’re very much on the more traditional dementia science, and then some of the machine learning type things Alan’s doing. But through some of our collaborations, we’re already looking at ways that we can inject some of that engineering.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So, just yesterday, for example, Penny and I were in conversation with some of my sponsors Dyson, and we were talking about, a small technical problem that we sometimes encounter with some of the imaging that we do. And you can just see their minds whizzing and they’re saying, “We can potentially work around these problems.” And even by potentially 3D printing, small pieces of plastic that could realign something, and working with these kinds of people is just really inspiring to see how we can potentially take ideas from each other. And something that is incredibly complicated to me as a non-engineer is a five minute fun job on a 3D printer to someone who does this every day. And these are just fantastic context to have.

Adam Smith:

That’s brilliant. I mean, how cool is that? I mean, having that expertise, I mean, perhaps not on call, but having access to expertise within a Formula 1 design factory, or within Dyson or elsewhere where just, whether it is something small to make your life easier in the lab or to create a unique new tool that you need to help you do something more effectively. I think that’s such an amazing, inspiring element to this that is so unique. I skipped a question that I meant to ask you before Penny, of course, with your fellowship program now being open to applicants, which we’ll come through in a moment, what people are you going to be looking for in this next round?

Dr Penny Moyle:

Much the same as the last one, I can get more people like Claire, that would be fantastic. So principally, we’re looking for the strong science. We need people who have demonstrated an appropriate track record for their career stage, with a strong proposal for the science they’re going to want to do over the five-year fellowship. So we’re very much led by the quality of the applicant in that sense.

Dr Penny Moyle:

But they also need to be up for this Formula 1 attitude things. They don’t need to be Formula 1 fans, they need to have some appetite and curiosity and perhaps learning a bit about that other world. But particularly to be interested in how can they make those connections? How can they take things from another field of endeavour and use them in their own research or project planning, or it could be any aspect of actually getting a piece of research done.

Dr Penny Moyle:

But they need to want to make a big impact, want to make things different, having a drive and a thirst for learning. So there’s that attitudinal piece, but first and foremost, they need to be great dementia scientists who are trying to solve a piece of the dementia puzzle.

Adam Smith:

I mean, you can see that having that attitude, at least there is a foundation to start with. So great science and an open to being part of this. I guess, being able to comfortably talk about your work. I mean, it might not suit some of the more introverted people, perhaps. I don’t know. Although is that something you help bring out in people?

Dr Penny Moyle:

I would say so. So introverts please do apply, even if you don’t feel like public speaking is your thing. Because that’s actually part of the training and support we can offer you. But we’re looking for the diamonds in the rough. We don’t mind them being, not yet completely polished, because that’s definitely something that we can help with. But they need to really care about the dementia science and show that they can do a good job of that and to be up for these sorts of changes. But anything else, we can help with.

Adam Smith:

That’s really inspiring and encouraging that people shouldn’t be discouraged if they’re not confident in this way. But if you’ve got good underlying research, you should apply. And Claire having successfully navigated this application process, what advice would you give to anybody thinking of applying for this?

Dr Claire Durrant:

I mean, so someone gave me some fantastic advice when I was applying, which is the three Ps of a fellowship application, and all three of them need to be present for successful one. And that’s, primarily the person, so who you are as an applicant and your ideas and where you see yourself going, the project, obviously the research ideas that you have, how you’re going to physically do it. The techniques that you’ve built up over time, will you need to learn new techniques, and the place. Are you going to a place which is going to be supported by world-leading researchers? Will there be the equipment that you need to do it? Are you going to be an environment where you will excel?

Dr Claire Durrant:

And I would say that, none of them are more important than the other. They are triad, which really depends on each other, because if any of those three things fall flat, the project will ultimately not be a success. So I think really when you’re writing that application, if you just constantly have that in your mind, and is this defending my project, is it defending myself, or is it defending the place I’m going to?

Dr Claire Durrant:

And if it’s none of those three things, it’s probably not such a valuable aspect of the project. And for me as well, I think start early, it takes a long time to really synthesize because you all have that moment where you’re staring at a blank piece of paper and you go, “Oh my goodness, I can’t do this.” And you need to then go away for a day and then come back and go, no, I do have great ideas and I can write them down.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So I wouldn’t suggest applying the day before the deadline, but there’s certainly lots of admin things that you need to do as well. So it’s a question of making sure you start early and talk to people, talk to your admin team. I had some fantastic support from Edinburgh research office, despite the fact that I was located in Cambridge at the time, just called them up and said, “Look, I’m wanting to apply for a fellowship, which we’re based in Edinburgh. Can you help me?”

Dr Claire Durrant:

And, within a day I had details of all the finance team who were helping me do costings and details of all of the ways of admin deadlines and their phone numbers that I could ring at any point to give them the help. So people will help if you ask for it. And I think don’t sit there struggling alone, if there’s someone who’s gone through the process before or know more about it than you because there will be someone who can absolutely help.

Adam Smith:

Brilliant. We have actually done a podcast before on how to successfully apply for fellowships, which if you dig into our archive, listeners will find that there. Please do go and have a listen. We also have a WhatsApp community group that has a real mixture of people at varying stages that would still be fall into this early career researcher category, or were always quite supportive. So people should find details under the ask an expert section of the website and you can join up to that as well, which you’ll find a good community of people who are always willing to take a second look at applications and things. I read a really interesting thread on Twitter last week that was making an argument for saying the very first paragraph is the most important part to don’t skimp on making that really interesting and good and making clear what your question.

Dr Claire Durrant:

To be honest, I would agree, and I’d go as far as to say, as the lay abstract is the most important part. And certainly for me, something particularly about the Race Against Dementia fellowship was I did a lot of research about the fellowship beforehand, and I saw that they were very interested in these out there ideas and this type of attitude of accelerating research and bringing in those ideas.

Dr Claire Durrant:

So I made sure that, that was reflected in my project. I wasn’t going to say this is a run of the mill project for a Race Against Dementia application. This is ambitious for this reason, but achievable for this reason. And I think you really have to go with the fellowship you’re applying to like, absolutely if you’re putting in multiple applications, you shouldn’t have the same project, exactly the same projects for a Wellcome Trust versus a Race Against Dementia. You can have similar ideas, but the way you would approach them will be different based on those fellowships. So really cater to Race Against Dementia when you’re thinking about writing that

Adam Smith:

That’s the same with jobs. I mean, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s very, very sound advice and it sounds like they’re very open to looking at something that’s a little bit creative and that maybe is a little unique as well. Don’t be afraid to apply if you’ve got an idea that’s not being done everywhere else. And of course, as Penny, you mentioned before, Alzheimer’s Research UK provide their support and administration of the fellowship.

Adam Smith:

So we have also on the website, got a whole range of blogs being written by people who’ve observed ARUK’s grant round review group meetings. So again, do have a look on the website to see, and there are some really interesting little pieces of feedback there from people who’ve observed grants being reviewed by the panel. So, these might also help. So, Penny, sorry, just to come back to you again. How do people find out more information? When is the deadline?

Dr Penny Moyle:

So the deadline is January the 20th, 2021. So you’ve got a few months now to put together your applications. But as Claire says, do start soon if you’re going to be doing this. The easiest place to find details are the two easy places. One is to go to the Alzheimer’s Research UK website and look at their fellowship programs, and that will come up. Or if you search on Race Against Dementia on their website, you will find it pretty easily. Or you can come to the Race Against Dementia website, which is just raceagainstdementia.com. And then you click your way through to the fellowship program there. But it will just take you through to Alzheimer’s Research UK, because they’re hosting the application process.

Adam Smith:

Thank you. So, don’t leave it till Christmas, because all those research teams in universities will all be on leave. Don’t wait that long. I think it’s early November now. I think that still gives people plenty of time to write a really strong application. And at the time when there are so many of the other grants haven’t been managed to be funded this year because of the challenges with the pandemic and particularly charity funding, I think this is a wonderful opportunity that’s coming up the perfect time for so many people. So hopefully, it’ll be competitive and good. And of course, is this something that’s only for the… Many of our listeners are outside the UK Penny. Is this something that just for the UK or is it elsewhere?

Dr Penny Moyle:

I am so glad you asked that question. No, it’s not. Within the Alzheimer’s Research UK program, there is a requirement that you have an affiliation with a UK institution. So you do need to have a connection in the UK, but we absolutely encourage you to share your time within the fellowship across a UK institution and somewhere else. So we’re wanting people to develop those collaborative international networks wherever possible.

Dr Penny Moyle:

I think Claire mentioned that one of our current fellows is currently in Florida, although her affiliation is with UCL. That’s Kara Croft. So absolutely sort of having some time in one place and some time in another. It could be that you’re an international researcher somewhere outside the UK at the moment, but if you can get an affiliation with a UK university, then this fellowship could be for you. You could spend some time wherever you are now and sometime in the UK within this fellowship program. So do think about it that way.

Dr Penny Moyle:

The other thing also to note is, we have a couple of other fellowship programs up and running. They currently don’t have applications open, but if they are the sort of thing you’re interested in, keep in touch with our website and you’ll find out when we do have applications again.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So we have a collaboration with Dementia Australia. As you might imagine, that’s for Australian researchers. Those applications closed just recently, so we’re looking forward to announcing the two successful fellows from that in the new year. And we also have a collaboration with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. So we don’t currently have anything open with them. But again, Claire mentioned Ellen Dicks, who’s the current incumbent of the RAD-Mayo Fellowship. So we are doing things internationally. We want to make everything have an international flavour so that our fellows are a global network amongst themselves. But even for this fellowship which has UK in the title, it isn’t only open to UK residents.

Adam Smith:

I think if any of our listeners are outside the UK and the thing that might be putting them off applying is this trying to find an affiliation, please don’t be discouraged. What I will try to do is, I will try to get a blog together, making a few suggestions on how you might find somebody to work with in the UK. And you can also drop us a line on Twitter. We know a lot of people and we can always make introductions to people as well. Don’t be deterred.

Dr Penny Moyle:

And Adam, if I might just sort of interrupt. Equally, if you’re in the UK and thinking about this, you will have a stronger application if you can have within your application to show how you’re going to collaborate with some other institution outside of the UK. So do have that in mind as well. I think we didn’t highlight it. Claire is actually working with some German collaborators on this technique. We sort of glossed over that slightly, but there is an international element for you as well.

Adam Smith:

That’s a really good point. And actually, just something that comes to mind there is, if you are in the UK, if you’re a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s, ISTAART program, the professional interest areas there you… If you’re not in a professional interest area, have a look at the ISTAART website. You can sign up to a PIA there, and the groups in there, people from all over the world. And I think, you don’t have to go searching around Twitter if you’re interested in something particular to do with neuroinflammation or something.

Adam Smith:

There is a dedicated PIA to that, and there will be people there you can probably find who might be interested in talking to you. But again, do reach out. I know Alzheimer’s Research UK scientists on Twitter can be very helpful and us as well. Thank you, Penny. Before we wrap up today, of course, I realized that Race Against Dementia is a charity. And some of our listeners might not be in the market for a fellowship right now, but they are always looking for ways to help and fundraising activities to share or promote your work. Is there something that other people can do to support making more fellows next year?

Dr Penny Moyle:

Sure. Anything you can do that helps raise awareness of Race Against Dementia and have people pop into our website and click on the donate button, would be brilliant. The thing that we have going at the moment to help people want to visit our website, I guess, is the memories video series. Sir Jackie has done a series of videos with some of his famous and interesting friends talking about their memories with the LinkedIn, of course, that dementia robs us of our memories. So we wanted to fight to protect yours.

Dr Penny Moyle:

So if you can share the idea of memories and share the link to the memories part of our website to help people come and engage in some of that content, which is entertainment. But, if while you’re there you’d like to donate something, that will be brilliant too. But if you can’t afford to at the moment, that’s absolutely fine. But do just keep sharing the information. Because at some point it’s a numbers game and somebody will come to the website who will be able to donate, and that’s what we want to have encouraged.

Adam Smith:

Fantastic. Thank you, Penny. I think it’s time to end today’s show. I’d like to thank my guests, Dr. Penny Moyle and Dr. Claire Durrant and Sir Jackie Stewart and Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK for supporting researchers and providing this fantastic opportunity. I do hope our listeners have been inspired by the show today, to go away and to look on the website and to apply for this fellowship, because it really does sound like an absolutely fantastic opportunity.

Adam Smith:

You can find out more about Penny and Claire and the open call on our website, which is dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk. You can also go directly to the Race Against Dementia’s website, which is raceagainstdementia.com, or you’ll find them on Twitter as well @racingdementia, and also as well on Alzheimer’s Research UK’s website for the actual application details. Thank you very much both.

Dr Claire Durrant:

Thank you so much.

Dr Penny Moyle:

Thanks, Adam.

Adam Smith:

Everybody, please remember this is a podcast. It’s just a small part of what we do. On our website, you’ll find details of all the available dementia research funding calls. You’ll find blogs on career topics, research, and much more. So please do drop by our website and register for our weekly updates. And thank you all for listening.

Voice Over:

Brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early-career dementia researches across the world.

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