Capital award for UK DRI at King's College London

Alongside significant co-investment from King's College London, the expected outcome of this funding is to provide its associate director £2.5m for procurement of capital equipment supporting the new UK DRI in implementing its first scientific programmes (funding provided separately) and scaling up.
Together, the equipment and the new Maurice Whole Clinical Neuroscience building will provide the location for, in the initial stages of 3 programmes, and then capacity for its significant growth in number in subsequent years. The UK DRI as a whole will help to cement the UK’s world-leading position by also promoting innovate approaches and forging much closer collaboration and integration of on-going UK research efforts. The new institute has been established to lead the UK’s dementia research effort and forms a core part of achieving the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2020.

The aim of this award is to support King's College London with capital investment for setting-up of one of six UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) centres; in particular, the procurement of equipment.

At present, 3 programmes have been selected planned for the UK DRI at King's College London and with scientific and operational leadership provided by its associate director, Professor Chris Shaw. The project at King's College London will involve purchasing equipment to scale up and fill the UK DRI at King’s College London, to be located at new Maurice Whol Clinical Neuroscience building which could house up to 250 researchers. The location is ready to be occupied.

The approach of the institute as a whole, of which the UK DRI at King's College London forms a core part, is to amplify and enhance, not replace, current dementia research efforts in the UK. The UK DRI will help to cement the UK’s world-leading position by supplying vital new funding for research, coupled to promoting innovate approaches and forging much closer collaboration and integration of on-going UK research efforts.

There is a gap in our knowledge of how the healthy brain functions and what leads to its degeneration. The UK DRI will fill this crucial gap that exists at the start of the dementia research journey. It will study the healthy brain and neurodegeneration in order to build new knowledge and understanding that will lead to new treatments. It will also proactively connect to existing clinical and population-level dementia initiatives – for example as being undertaken by the MRC Dementias Platform UK and through the NIHR TRC-D – to catalyse a unique national and strategic approach to confronting the dementia challenge.

In particular, the present research at the UK DRI at King's College London plans to look at the earliest stages of fronto-temporal dementia and ALS, looking for common mechanisms across neurodegenerative diseases, including: misfolding and aggregation of TDP-43; RNA binding activity; nuclear pore protein transport Funding to these science programmes is provided separately.