Cumulus NeuroScience: Real-World Technology to Accelerate Clinical Trials in Dementia

It is estimated that more than one million people in the UK will have dementia by 2025, with one in three born in 2015 projected to develop it in their lifetimes (ARUK, www.dementiastatistics.org). Clinical trials in this field are typically long, drug development costs are extremely high, and success rates for development of dementia treatments are exceedingly low. For many thousands of patients enrolled in ongoing or planned clinical trials, it is vital to maximise their valuable contribution alongside the efforts of drug developers by accelerating the path to treatment. BrainWaveBank's current platform is designed to provide a health technology solution to support measurement of drug mechanisms, stratification of treatment groups, and early detection of response to therapies. It consists of an easy-to-use, wearable headset, accompanied by games presented on a tablet that test different aspects of cognition, yielding brain-based biomarkers of neurophysiological mechanisms and cognitive function.

In this project, BrainWaveBank will build upon their existing platform to incorporate integrated, synchronous assessment of a broader range of domains that are particularly relevant in dementia. Providing a single platform to unify measurements for clinical trials, where previously multiple different tools would have been used to cover the same ground, will significantly reduce patient burden, minimise variability across studies and dramatically reduce timelines and cost for drug developers, ultimately leading to a better understanding of disease and faster routes to market for promising treatments.