Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I realise that Members often curl their lip when Conservative Members stand up to tell the Prime Minister how brilliant he is; but since he put dementia on the global agenda in 2012 the horizon has changed remarkably. Between 2012 and 2015 something like £60 million was pumped into research, and there are incredibly ambitious targets for the doubling by 2020 of dementia and Alzheimer’s research. That includes all sources—Government, private and charity.

The issue is all about capacity building; £300 million is now being pumped in, of which £150 million is earmarked for a dementia research institute and an international discovery fund of 130 million quid. However, we must face the fact that the field of dementia research is still very small in comparison with others, particularly bearing in mind the fact that the £26 billion annual cost is more than the combined cost to the country of cancer and heart disease. Despite that, only three new drugs have been discovered in the past 15 years.

Something has to change, and that is why the Government’s announcement of a dementia research institute is so important. It is important for three reasons, the first of which is security for researchers. I do not know how many hon. Members know any scientific researchers, but they are as interested as anyone else in having a career. When they pick a specialism to devote their lives to, they need to know that there is a future in it, and the likelihood of funding to sustain them throughout their career. At the moment, dementia does not provide that. A dementia research institute will do it. At the moment about 70% of PhD graduates in dementia research leave academic research within four years of starting. That is not good enough if we are to find a cure.

Secondly, in the search for a cure, a single molecular target is highly unlikely. There is not a silver bullet to cure dementia. There are many different types of dementia and different underlying influences. If we are to find therapies and cures, and things that will assuage dementia and allow people to live with it, we will need a huge amount of collaboration. In the past 20 or 30 years, the private sector has spent about £30 billion researching dementia across the piece, but that has been happening in different silos, often with researchers working on the same dead ends, and wasting the money three or four times. It is critical that we should collaborate, particularly internationally, in the search for a cure.

Finally, given that there will be no single molecular target, it is unlikely that there will be significant advances on a cure in the next 10 or 15 years. One of the Cinderella research areas, which does not get much funding or concentration, is care, therapy and management. One of my key wishes with respect to the new dementia research institute is that it should become a soup-to-nuts research institute, looking at diagnosis, care, therapy, psychology and support for families, as well as a cure. The Government announced about 18 months ago that the institute would be up and running within five years. That means there are only three and a half years left, and I would be pleased if the Minister updated us on progress, with respect to announcing a location, funding, and who will host the institute. Only once we have that centre of global excellence will we be in a proper position to tackle what is likely to be one of the top five public health challenges of the next century.