Neuroscience
Project aim
To fund pivotal academic posts, and purchase key equipment.
Target
£2.4 million.
Recognising significant support
- Naming academic posts
- Naming significant equipment
The University of Bristol has one of the highest concentrations of international neuroscientists in the UK. We have an exceptional opportunity to capitalise on this and find a way to beat these devastating diseases that affect so many families.
Stafford Lightman
Professor of Medicine
Seeking new treatments to improve life for patients and their families.
Importance
Understanding the brain is one of the last great challenges in science and this project aims to further our knowledge in this area.
Every five minutes, someone in the UK has a stroke. One in twenty people over the age of 65 and one in five over the age of 80 suffer from dementia (a current total of 750,000 people in the UK, and rising annually). One in ten people will experience clinical depression during their life: depression is projected to become the nation’s second biggest killer by 2020.
Impact
The enormous strength of the neuroscience community at Bristol University ensures that new initiatives take place within a very fertile and enterprising environment with top quality supervision and the availability of state-of-the-art equipment and resources. In this environment, donor investment can yield major benefits and increments in productivity.
Gifts will strengthen existing research programmes, either by creating new links between different neuroscience groups within Bristol or providing new facilities for blue sky research which has the potential to make major advances in our understanding of the human brain and its disorders.
The output of this research will speed treatments to patients and reduce National Health Service costs.
Goal
To fund research in the fields of Parkinson's, Dementia, MS and Stress-related diseases, and create lectureships/fellowships and studentships for rising academic stars.
Funds are also sought for key equipment to facilitate advances in research. This will enable research into the mechanisms underlying these disorders and develop novel and powerful treatments for these diseases that devastate both patients and their families.