Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to invest in and encourage research into new treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

United Kingdom (UK) researchers are at the forefront of global efforts to find a cure or a disease-modifying treatment by 2025. The 2020 Dementia Challenge commitment to spend £300 million on dementia research over five years, was delivered a year early with £344 million spent by 2019. Further research includes the £190 million UK Dementia Research Institute with a focus on basic science, the £43 million Dementias Platform UK supporting experimental medicine studies and the National Institute for Health Research’s (NIHR) Dementia Translational Research Collaboration, which brings together industry, academia and charities to deliver research.

The Department is a founding partner of the international Dementia Discovery Fund, backing commercial ventures trying innovative new approaches to dementia. In March 2021, the NIHR launched a highlight notice on dementia which invited proposals for research, including meeting the needs of underserved communities.