Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the major cause of dementia which has no cure at the moment. The overall aim of the work described in this proposal is to create a long-term strategic partnership between Sheffield University (UK), Lisbon University (Portugal), Eli Lilly (UK) and Biofordrug (Italy) in order to develop chemical biology tools for better understanding the role of PrPC in AD and harnessing this understanding to develop novel chemical entities for diagnostic and therapeutics applications. The D3i4AD project brings together a consortium of groups with internationally-leading expertise from academia and industries in chemistry, molecular design and modelling, biochemistry, diagnostic and drug development. Our proposed programme will lead to major increases in the knowledge and capacity of all consortium members, achieved through significant intersectoral exchange of personnel between the partners over the duration of the project (total 134 person months) and through temporary recruitment of 5 new experienced researchers (total 114 person months). The project will thus underpin a substantial programme of intersectoral knowledge transfer and research training and lead to significant innovation and advances in several areas of basic research as well as diagnostics and therapeutics development. These activities will strongly enhance EU standing and international competitiveness in this extremely challenging and increasingly important technological area.