About
The Dementia Trials Accelerator helps clinical trialists across industry and academia find suitable participants for dementia studies, while giving people affected by or at risk of dementia more options to take part.
By facilitating faster, larger and more inclusive clinical trial recruitment, the Dementia Trials Accelerator supports researchers and trialists to find better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat dementia.
Why it matters
Neurological conditions are the world’s leading cause of ill health, with dementia cases set to rise by more than 50% by 2050.
Yet, progress in dementia research and treatments is held back by the difficulty of recruiting enough suitable volunteers for clinical trials. Often close to 80% of volunteer participants are excluded based on screening procedures.
The UK response
In 2023, a government-commissioned independent review offered recommendations on how to resolve key challenges in conducting commercial clinical trials in the UK. The resulting “Lord O’Shaughnessy review” noted that regaining the UK’s global leadership position required accelerating new and innovative ways to deliver trials.
The government accepted this and other recommendations and committed to establish clinical trial acceleration networks, of which this Dementia Trials Accelerator is one.
The Dementia Trials Accelerator, supporting the government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme, will provide options for people at risk of or diagnosed with early-stage dementia to participate in research and enable researchers to find suitable participants for dementia-related clinical trials rapidly and at scale. By doing so, the Dementia Trials Accelerator will enable researchers to discover new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat dementia and other brain conditions.
Working in partnership
The Dementia Trials Accelerator is convened by two of the UK’s national research institutes, the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). We are taking a collaborative and partnership approach to delivery, including leveraging assets and services wherever possible, to build on existing investments and speed up delivery.
The UK DRI and HDR UK are working closely with the Government’s Office of Life Sciences, the REACT study at Imperial, Inuvi, the AD-SMART trial at Imperial along with many other cross-sector partners.
Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) is at the heart of our work. You can read more about patient and public involvement in the Dementia Trials Accelerator, and how you can get involved on the Patients and Public page.
What we offer
Working with our partners, the Dementia Trials Accelerator will offer four distinct services to researchers and clinical trialists across industry and academia, to support increasing recruitment to clinical trials in the UK:
- 1. The ability to pre-screen eligible participants for dementia related trials, across UK cohorts using an open standards based, collaborative approach and single shop window
- 2. Support both industry and academic clinical trialists with a ‘pre-measured cohort’ and the ability to re-contact participants at scale to facilitate recruitment
- 3. Measurement of novel dementia trial relevant biomarkers and cognitive testing at scale
- 4. Support innovative trial design & delivery
These services will be delivered in partnership with the existing UK ecosystem, with a digital first and “at scale” ethos and will involve patients and the public throughout in stakeholder design and dialogue.
Frequently Asked Questions
The services are suitable for professionals working in both academic and industry sponsored trials, including those at Clinical Research Organisations (CROs), trial managers, and site staff such as study coordinators and clinical project managers who are looking to recruit participants for dementia-related trials in the UK.
You can volunteer to participate in dementia related clinical trials via our partner Join Dementia Research
The project is funded by the Medical Research Council, which supports science and health research in the UK. The work of the Dementia Trials Accelerator is a collaborative team effort by Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) in partnership with researchers at Imperial College London (Imperial), including the REACT study and partners across the UK.
Participants in our partner cohort studies (e.g. REACT at Imperial) have their data pseudonymised (de-identified), formatted to an open standard (Observational Medical Outcome partnership – OMOP) and made searchable for approved clinical trialists. The trialists only receive high level numeric results to their queries. i.e. 1000 people in this cohort match the criteria a trialist was searching for (for example people aged>65 with diagnosis of dementia)
All of our cohort partner participants have consented to be recontacted for clinical trials, so if a group of participants match trial criteria, the trialist can be put in touch with the cohort partner directly who can help with inviting those participants to a trial
The government launched Dame Barbara Windsor Goals Programme aims to realise a new generation of precision dementia therapies and solutions for the UK – by accelerating innovations in biomarkers, clinical trials and implementation
If you are a triallist or researcher and want more information about how we can help you with your trial, contact us at enquiries@dementia-trials-accelerator.org
If you are a patient or member of the public, you can find out more about getting involved in our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement activities within the Dementia Trials Accelerator on this page.
Acknowledgements
The Dementia Trials Accelerator is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in partnership with the Office of Life Sciences. We would like to acknowledge our many delivery partners and the patients and public involved in both biomarker measurement and volunteering for clinical trials in addition to those providing input in shaping and developing the initiative.