The brain health movement in the UK as a life sciences priority

Synopsis

This is the third event of the three-part SCItalks series on Dementia.

Advances in the knowledge of the earliest stages of neurodegenerative disease have emerged from global studies led from Scotland. This knowledge has confirmed the hypothesis that the diseases that lead to dementia originate in early adulthood and the best window of opportunity for management is in mid-life. To develop new detection tools and test new therapies, the Health Systems and Universities must work with the commercial sector and patient groups in the 'quadruple helix’ - to ensure meaningful, high quality and rapid advances are made scientifically that can be implemented with minimal delays. In the talk, the background science will be presented that underscores the ‘disease before dementia’ mantra, the steps taken in Scotland to implement this knowledge into practice across the life course from a public health to individual level and the role of companies like Scottish Brain Sciences in accelerating these developments to market.

For further information on the first and second event of the three-part SCItalks series, please click on the links below:

September - click here
October - click here

Speaker

Prof Craig Ritchie

Scottish Brain Sciences

Prof Craig Ritchie is Founder and CEO of Scottish Brain Sciences and the Honorary Professor of the Psychiatry of Ageing at the University of Edinburgh, having moved from his role as Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Mental Health at Imperial College London in October 2014. He completed his PhD at UCL through an MRC Health Services Research Fellowship and was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Old Age Psychiatry at Imperial College London in 2007. He has also served as R&D Director at West London Mental Health Trust from 2010-14 and Deputy Director of the London Northwest NIHR Clinical Research Network. In 2014 he was appointed as Chair in Psychiatry of Ageing at the University of Edinburgh. In 2015 he established the Centre for Dementia Prevention and that year took on the academic leadership role of the EPAD (European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia) Programme. Between 2017 and 2022 he was the elected Chair of the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium and in 2020 he founded and was the inaugural Director of Brain Health Scotland. He has published over 400 academic papers, conference abstracts and book chapters and secured approximately €100M of grant funding in his career to date.

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