About
The Dementia Trials Accelerator is an initiative that aims to help clinical trials researchers find suitable participants for dementia studies and provide people in the UK who are affected by, or at risk of, dementia with options to take part in clinical trials.
By enabling faster, larger and more inclusive clinical trial recruitment, the Dementia Trials Accelerator supports clinical trials researchers 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 not able to take part in studies because they do not match eligibility criteria.
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 establishing networks to speed up clinical trials, of which this Dementia Trials Accelerator is one.
The Dementia Trials Accelerator is supporting the government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme by providing options for people at risk of, or diagnosed with, early-stage dementia to take part in research. This will enable researchers to find suitable participants for dementia-related clinical trials rapidly and at scale. By doing so, the Dementia Trials Accelerator will allow 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 is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). We are working collaboratively and in partnership to deliver this work, including using existing assets and services wherever possible, to build on previous 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 and ‘AD-SMART’ trial at Imperial College London, along with many other partners across the sector.
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, we offer two distinct services to clinical trials researchers across industry and academia:
- 1. The ability to pre-screen eligible participants for dementia related trials, across multiple UK cohorts using open standards and a collaborative approach
- 2. The ability to re-contact participants at scale through a highly phenotyped, trial-ready cohort of 10,000 people
These services are enabled by the measurement of novel dementia trial relevant biomarkers and cognitive testing at scale, and innovative trial design & delivery, with the AD-SMART trial as a first use case.
They are delivered through partnerships across the existing UK dementia ecosystem, using a digital-first and scalable approach.
We involve patients and the public throughout the design and delivery of these services and programmes. We would like to thank those with lived experience of dementia who have already been involved in shaping our work.
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, including the REACT study and partners across the UK.
Participants in our partner cohort studies and registries (existing groups of research participants, e.g. Generation Scotland) have their data pseudonymised (de-identified), formatted to an open standard (Observational Medical Outcome partnership Common Data Model – OMOP CDM) and made searchable for approved clinical trials researchers through Cohort Discovery. The researchers only receive high level numeric results to their queries. For example, a researcher searching for the number of people aged over 65 with a diagnosis of dementia could find out that there are around 1000 people in a particular cohort that match this criteria.
All of our cohort partner participants have consented to be recontacted for clinical trials, so if a group of participants match the criteria for a trial, 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 the Dame Barbara Windsor Goals Programme 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 clinical trials 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 delivering the initiative.