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More than 20,000 volunteers have been recruited to a resource aimed at speeding up the development of much-needed dementia drugs. The cohort will enable scientists in universities and industry to involve healthy individuals who may be at increased risk of dementia in clinical trials to test whether new drugs can slow the decline in various brain functions including memory and delay the onset of dementia.

Using the resource, scientists have already been able to show for the first time that two important bodily mechanisms – inflammation and metabolism – play a role in the decline in brain function as we age.

We’ve created a resource that is unmatched anywhere else in the world, recruiting people who are not showing any signs of dementia rather than people already having symptoms. ~ Caius Fellow Professor Patrick Chinnery

�²ʿ��� Fellow from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and co-Chair of the NIHR BioResource, who has led the project, said: “We’ve created a resource that is unmatched anywhere else in the world, recruiting people who are not showing any signs of dementia rather than people already having symptoms. It will allow us to match individuals to particular studies and speed up the development of much-needed new drugs to treat dementia.

“We know that over time our cognitive function decreases, so we’ve plotted out the expected trajectory of various different cognitive functions over our volunteers’ life course according to their genetic risk. We’ve also asked the question, ‘What are the genetic mechanisms that predispose you to slow or fast cognitive decline as you age?’.”

Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, scientists led by the University of Cambridge in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Society report how they have recruited 21,000 people aged 17-85 to the Genes and Cognition Cohort within the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) BioResource.

The NIHR BioResource was established in 2007 to recruit volunteers keen to engage in experimental medicine and clinical trials across the whole of medicine. Approximately half of its participants are recruited to disease specific cohorts, but the other half are from the general public, and detailed information about their genetics and their physical makeup has been collected. They have all given their consent to be contacted about future research studies.