102518An integrated non-vertebrate drug discovery platform for neurodegenerative diseaseClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKWith a rapidly increasing ageing population, age-related health problems (including neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease) are presenting a challenge to, and burden on existing health care provision. Yet whilst such diseases represent a growing therapeutic need, their treatment is hampered both by the cost and time commitment to bring new medicines to market. Currently, two major reasons for failure of new drugs are complications associated with negative side-effects and the ethical and cost issues associated with experimentation in non-human vertebrates. Our aim is to develop a robust screening platform in a worm model of neurodegenerative disease. The screening pipeline will make it possible to test drugs for effectiveness against symptoms of neurodegenerative disease and also establish early on whether the same drugs have toxic effects; this will help to reduce failure or “attrition” of drugs at later stages of testing. Consequently, we anticipate that those drugs that do go through to trial in human subjects will offer the best likelihood of treatment success without adverse side-effects.