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Podcast: Why we work on Alzheimer's disease
An Interview With John Davis

Why academic drug discovery? Academic drug discovery has gained traction over recent years and the pharmaceutical industry is no longer the sole point of call for target development and lead optimisation. Nearly a fifth of drugs recently approved by the EMA originated from academic and publicly-funded drug discovery programmes, and we’ve seen particular successes in the field of oncology. Dementia is a huge area of unmet clinical need and one that we can tackle by uniting the deep disease area knowledge of academia with the broad drug discovery expertise of the Alzheimer’s research UK Drug Discovery Alliance.

The Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute (ODDI) couples the deep disease knowledge and biology expertise of the academic community with high quality, innovative drug discovery technologies. This initiative is based on juxtaposing high quality drug discovery expertise alongside a deep scientific and academic understanding of patients, disease mechanisms, and model systems. The intent is to translate cutting edge academic science into drug discovery, and to prosecute projects from target to lead status, and beyond. 

Housed within The Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford, the ODDI is uniting collaborative efforts for target identification with sophisticated target development capabilities. Led by the CSO, Professor John Davis, the ODDI focuses on novel targets in the dementia therapeutic area, bringing together researchers from Biology, Chemistry, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience. The institute is part of a newly formed, world-class, network of three drug discovery institutes, sponsored by Alzheimer’s Research UK. 

The Oxford Drug Discovery Institute is one of three Institutes within the Alzheimer’s Research UK Drug Discovery Alliance, working alongside Institutes at the University of Cambridge and University College London. The Alliance will accelerate the discovery of novel, effective therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Alzheimer’s Research UK unites more than 1000 dementia researchers from across the UK to support and streamline dementia research. The charity is dedicated to funding the best minds and forging the most effective partnerships to nurture discovery and ideas, as well as translating findings from this pioneering research into benefits for people with dementia. For more information, visit ARUK’s website.