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LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Drugmakers are linking witheight British universities in a 16 million-pound ($27 million)public-private partnership to speed up research into dementia bystudying data from 2 million people in the world's largest suchproject.
The new UK Dementias Research Platform will investigate thecauses of dementia by tracking volunteers, aged 50 and over, whoare taking part in existing population studies such as UKBiobank and the Million Women Study.
The aim is to give researchers a better understanding of whois at risk of getting dementia, possible triggers that lead todisease, and what might speed up or slow down its progression,the state-run Medical Research Council said on Thursday.
Major pharmaceutical companies backing the initiativeinclude AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson& Johnson.
David Willetts, the government's minister for universitiesand science, said the new platform was critical in helping Britain achieve its target of doubling dementia researchfunding.
The move coincides with a meeting of dementia experts inLondon following a summit last December involving ministers fromthe Group of Eight (G8) nations, which set a goal of finding acure or effective treatment for dementia by 2025.
The London meeting was the first G8 summit on a specificillness since HIV/AIDS and its target is ambitious, consideringthere is no obvious cure on the horizon.
Dementia - of which Alzheimer's disease is the most commonform - already affects 44 million people worldwide and this isset to reach 135 million by 2050, according to Alzheimer'sDisease International, a non-profit campaign group. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
