Print“If we are to beat dementia, says UK Prime Minister David Cameron, we must also work globally, with nations, business and scientists from all over the world working together as we did with cancer, and with HIV and AIDS.”
Health ministers representing the world’s major industrial nations pledged to identify a cure or a disease-modifying therapy for dementia by 2025.
Globally, 36 million people have dementia, a population the World Health Organization predicts will nearly double every two decades. Clouding memory, thinking, language, and judgment, dementia is now one of the greatest pressures on global healthcare systems, taking an estimated annual toll of $604 billion.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron reports that the U.K.’s life sciences sector spent about $85.1 million (£52 million) on dementia during the past two years. “But if we are to beat dementia,” he says, “we must also work globally, with nations, business and scientists from all over the world working together as we did with cancer, and with HIV and AIDS.”
To that end, G8 health ministers meeting at the Dementia Summit in London December 11 pledged to work closely with one another to chip away at the condition's impact. Through coordinated global action, they intend to improve dementia care, find new ways to prevent and delay its onset, and pursue social adaptations to help those struggling with dementia's symptoms.
The European Commission made the biggest financial commitment at the event, promising $759 million (€550 million) to back research on neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, Europe's largest public-private drug development effort, the Innovative Medicines Initiative, says it will invest $73 million (€53 million) in Alzheimer’s drug trials.
Cameron says the U.K. alone will spend up to $108 million (£66 million) on dementia research by 2015 while seeking to double funding by 2025 for public, commercial, and charitable research and development to support scientists, universities, and other institutions seeking the next dementia treatment. He also unveiled the newly-formed U.K. Dementia Platform, said to be the world’s largest research collaboration into dementia, bringing together researchers and scientists from the public and private sectors.
The Medical Research Council, a publicly funded government agency responsible for coordinating and funding medical research in the U.K., said it will invest $81.8 million (£50 million) earmarked to better understand how dementia affects the brain, improve early detection, and improve treatments to delay progression of the disease. An extra $41 million (£25 million) will go to the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit to fund work to better understand the cognitive mechanisms of the brain, including imaging to identify early signs of dementia in people that would not be picked up through current diagnostic tests.
“Dementia is a critical public health issue,” says Duncan Selbie, England’s chief executive of public health. “We can really make a difference to people’s lives by managing the causes of this group of diseases. This means we can delay onset of symptoms and add life to people’s years.”
In 2013, President Obama initiated a brain mapping initiative to increase understanding and added $100 million to the nation’s fiscal 2014 budget toward the goal of preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer’s disease by 2025.
December 12, 2013
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-g8_seeks_dementia_cure_by_2025.html
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