Ryan's District Boards

Drugmakers are linking with eight British universities in a 16 million-pound ($27 million) public-private partnership to speed up research into dementia by studying data from 2 million people in the world's largest such project. The new UK Dementias Research Platform will investigate the causes of dementia by tracking volunteers, aged 50 and over, who are taking part in existing population studies such as UK Biobank and the Million Women Study. The aim is to give researchers a better understanding of who is at risk of getting dementia, possible triggers that lead to disease, and what might speed up or slow down its progression, the state-run Medical Research Council said on Thursday. David Willetts, the government's minister for universities and science, said the new platform was critical in helping Britain achieve its target of doubling dementia research funding.