Expert voice

Dementia Research Leader: Making clinical trials cheaper and faster

Disease-modifying treatments  

We’re now at an exciting time where we have effective disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease which can reduce rate of decline to memory and other important brain functions. While the benefits are modest, it is still welcome news to people living with this disease.  

These drugs also remove a large amount of the harmful amyloid-beta plaques that are the first sign of the disease.  

We know from research conducted by my mentor Professor Nick Fox and others in the field, that Alzheimer’s disease starts years before symptoms develop. This means there’s a tremendous opportunity if we can treat people earlier before symptoms start to show: a drug could potentially delay or even stop the disease by removing the amyloid plaques before long-term permanent damage occurs.  

In order to get to a place where we can treat people earlier, clinical trials must be performed to ensure the drug is safe and effective. However, there is no consensus on how a trial should be conducted when they’re for people at the incredibly early ‘pre-clinical’ non-symptomatic stage of Alzheimer’s disease.  

Improving clinical trials

During my fellowship with Alzheimer’s Society, I hope to find better ways to make drug trials quicker and cheaper. By doing this, it would take less time to identify if a drug is successful in providing benefits to patients and therefore means patients would get access to effective drugs earlier.  

What’s more, if a trial can rule out a drug, then we can move on and focus on other promising therapies. This is really important – we need to be able to move quickly and get treatments to people so we can preserve as much memory and brain function as possible.  

My hope is that we continue, step by step and bit by bit, to find new and better ways to detect, treat and hopefully prevent many cases of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, so that we can get to a point where we can focus far more on promoting lifelong brain health than managing symptoms.  

More dementia researchers are needed  

To get there, we absolutely need more researchers to enter dementia research. As a career, it’s a fascinating window into how the brain works and what can go wrong, at many scales: the cellular level, different structures in the brain, large-scale brain networks and what we observe from when we talk to people living with Alzheimer’s disease. 

First and foremost, of course, these researchers will be contributing to combatting some of the most complex diseases of our time. These diseases not only have a devastating effect on people living with dementia but also their loved ones.  

I’ve had family members with various forms of dementia or similar brain disorders and it’s very hard watching someone you love go through this. 

This personal connection inspires many researchers to enter the field. It isn’t always easy – there will be moments of adversity where they will doubt themselves and wonder whether the field is right for them. It’s important to realise that nearly everyone, from the most prestigious senior professors to the first year PhD students, have probably experienced these doubts at some point in their career. So, when these doubts creep in, the most important thing is to live with it and understand where these feelings and concerns are coming from.  

Talking with friends and mentors about these issues also tends to be a good idea, so that you can realise you are not alone and hear what others have experienced. While these moments can be uncomfortable, they are completely normal.  

Advice for early career researchers

I try to encourage early career researchers to embrace, and not run away from, any doubt that comes with research and a scientific career. A healthy dose of constructive scepticism, being able to critically analyse their own work and the work of others, will only make their research better and help to avoid blind spots.  

When I face setbacks or frustrations, I tend to see the technical frustrations as more of a competitive challenge. at other times, I try to re-focus on what we are trying to achieve – such as getting funding for a centre or a project we think will be important for dementia research. I’m fortunate that I am surrounded by individuals with different and varied areas of expertise so I’m always able to find someone who can help.  

Support from Alzheimer's Society

It’s incredibly rewarding work. One of the highlights of my career was when I gave my inaugural lecture on May 8th, 2025 after being made a professor with tenure at University College London.  

I remember discussing the possibility of giving an inaugural lecture with my family during lockdown and what an achievement it would be. 

Back then, it seemed so far away and I wasn’t sure if I would ever achieve it! It meant so much to have my wife and children there at my lecture, my mom (who came all the way from the US), close friends, and colleagues all there – and to showcase to them all of the research and discoveries that I have been involved in.  

Alzheimer’s Society has supported me through the Dementia Research Leader Fellowship to continue my work on detecting early changes in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia using brain scans.  

What's next?

The first step in my Dementia Researcher Leader Fellowship is to collect imaging and other biomarkers from unimpaired people from global studies. I’ll analyse the data to estimate long-term risk of developing symptoms from measures like amyloid and tau.  

I’m really excited to be able to work on this over the next five years so we can find better ways to run clinical trials during the pre-symptomatic phase and deliver meaningful benefits to patients.  

We also need to make neuroimaging more accessible - Alzheimer's disease affects people from all communities and backgrounds – but often people recruited to studies do not look like the general population and this has a knock-on effect when it comes to treatments. We need treatments that work for everyone and that means research participation needs to be recruiting more diverse populations.