Sharing their motivation and personal experiences behind Race Against Dementia, Sir Jackie and Mark Stewart spoke to ITV News and The Guardian this week to celebrate the progress in brain tissue examination by Dr Claire Durrant.
Read the ITV News article and watch the interview
Someone develops dementia every three seconds, and we still don’t have a cure. That’s why Race Against Dementia exists; to speed things up and bring us closer to a world without dementia sooner.
Developed by Dr Claire Durrant – a Race Against Dementia Dyson Fellow since 2019 – and her team – alongside the neurosurgical team at the University of Edinburgh – the project studies the role of proteins in Alzheimer’s by using slices of brain tissue collected during routine neurosurgery operations.
“this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients”
The research team has worked on this with the aim of identifying drugs that have the best chance of preventing the loss of connections in the brain.
“We believe this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the heartbreak of dementia.” – Dr Claire Durrant
Race Against Dementia is proud to fund young researchers such as Dr Durrant and her team as discoveries like these take the world one step closer to beating dementia. The funding has enabled them to create a dedicated laboratory space, allowing them to receive brain tissue every week and process it efficiently and effectively.
Now fully equipped, Dr Durrant and the team have been able to focus on generating experimental data relating to Alzheimer’s disease, studying how early pathology impacts brain function.
This breakthrough shows what is possible when science moves rapidly in an ever-evolving environment to work on a shared goal, just like in Formula One.
