LONDON – A coordinated approach to dementia drug discovery, uniting academics, industry and public and private funders, is showing signs of success in focusing research, speeding translation and de-risking the field for pharma.

"Our mission is to bring about the first life-changing treatment by 2025," said David Reynolds, CSO of the charity Alzheimer's Research U.K. (ARU.K.), which in addition to providing funding, is acting as a go-between and coordinator in the push to promote development of new drugs.

"We need to start by understanding the disease so we can get good targets that would interest this audience," Reynolds told the Bioindustry Association U.K. Bioscience Forum in London.

One key to this is the U.K. Dementia Research Institute (DRI), which got off the ground this summer with total funding of £250 million (US$332 million). Of this, £150 million came from the Medical Research Council, £50 million from ARU.K. and £50 million from another charity, the Alzheimer's Society.

The institute will fund 400 scientists based at centers in University College London, Imperial College London (UCL), King's College London and Cambridge, Edinburgh and Cardiff universities, who have identified 27 basic research projects that address fundamental gaps in understanding of dementia.

A major objective is to find out what mechanisms are involved during the 15 to 20 years when Alzheimer's pathology is in train but there are no evident symptoms. "We think we will get to understand the pre-symptomatic phase. In all likelihood we can't stop the disease dead in its tracks, but we could slow it down, so we hope for better insights," Reynolds said.

To capitalize on the outputs of DRI and on existing research, ARU.K. has set up a drug discovery alliance with researchers at UCL and Cambridge and Oxford universities. These involve combined biology and chemistry teams. But although based in universities, "this is not academic drug discovery; it is professional drug discovery done in academe," said Reynolds.

"All the team leaders have experience from industry and know how to put packages together that reduce risk," he said.

The alliance has been active for 18 months. As an indication of success, over half of the programs involve an industry partner. None have been outlicensed as yet, but said Reynolds, "we see we are helping to take risk out of the system."

John Davis, CSO of the discovery alliance, previously was a neuroscience researcher at Glaxosmithkline plc. "I became an academic because that's where I thought new therapies would come from," he told delegates.

ARU.K. also was co-founder of the Dementia Consortium, a pharma-backed body that funds validation of novel targets in any neurodegenerative disease from academia and SMEs.

In addition to funding of up to £2 million over three years, the consortium provides drug discovery resources, project management and industry expertise.

The Dementia Consortium was co-founded by Eisai Co. Ltd., the Japanese pharma that invented Aricept (donepezil), one of the very few approved Alzheimer's disease treatments.

Since Aricept was approved in 1996, the company has been "really challenged to find new targets" said Peter Atkinson, associate director of Eisai's neurology business group. Against this backdrop, the Dementia Consortium "has been a very productive exercise," Atkinson said.

More than 100 academic targets have been submitted for funding. "We get to sit in a room with academics and other pharma companies," said Atkinson. "There are huge benefits; I've really enjoyed working with the [consortium]."

In another pillar of its research strategy, ARU.K. was a founding investor in the $100 million Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), set up two years ago to identify novel dementia research projects in universities and biotechs worldwide and fund them through to the clinic.

"There's a real risk for investors in going in so early, but that's why we exist, because there is a real gap in funding in this area," said Laurence Barker, chief business officer of DDF.

The largest contribution to the fund was $22 million from the U.K. government. Pharma companies including Glaxosmithkline, Biogen Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson put money into DDF, which operates on the same lines as a traditional venture capital fund, with the exception that it reflects the additional risks in Alzheimer's research by having a 15-year term. (See BioWorld Today, Oct 21, 2015.)

"We are extraordinarily fortunate to have a set of strategic investors. We benefit from the capital and the scientific input," said Barker. In particular, the experience pharma companies bring in terms of experience of past failures in Alzheimer's drug development provides "enormous insights," he said.

The high level of failure of drugs in development, coupled with the growing toll of dementia, was the spur for ARU.K. to set the target of developing a meaningful treatment by 2025.

That mirrored the objective set by former U.S. president Barack Obama in the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Research, published in 2012. The first G8 Dementia Summit, held in London in 2013, made the same pledge.

In addition to coordinating some of the resulting research, ARU.K. is providing advocacy and ensuring dementia remains a government priority, Reynolds said. "There have been improvements in the research picture in the last five years, but we started a long way behind other areas, like heart disease."