Dementia cure may be just five years away says expert

A cure for dementia could be just five years away, according to a leading expert on the illness.

Dr Dennis Gillings, the departing chairmain of the World Dementia Council, said recent scientific progress had surpassed his expectations, with two potential breakthroughs now on the horizon.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said he was “optimistic” that treatments that could remove the plaques in the brain linked with dementia, and those to unscramble the neural tangles that characterise the disease, might be developed as soon as 2020.

He added: “The original goal was disease modification by 2025. I feel a lot more optimistic now. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get there by 2020 or 2021.”

Dr Gillings, who was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron to create the council in 2013, believes huge steps have been taken in understanding the disease and he believes it should be looked at in the same way as cancer.

He added that it was likely that breakthroughs would come from developing treatments which were targeted at different subtypes of the condition.

He told The Telegraph: “We may need more customised diagnosis. We used to just think cancer now we know there are many different types, with different treatments. We need to approach dementia similarly.”

Although Britain has created a £150million Dementia Research Institute, breakthroughs are more likely to be made in the U.S.

Currently the only medication available for diseases such as Alzheimer’s can mask symptoms but not delay the onset of them.

New chairman Dr Yves Joanette, scientific director at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aging, said: “The challenge is so huge here. We can get a man to the moon but we don’t know how the brain works.

“We are probably facing a multiplicity of types of diseases that we call dementia. We need to be able to stratify that, to break it into different types.

“To do that you don’t just need the best brains across the world working together, you also need the big data that comes with that.”

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Dementia doesn’t stop at UK borders and is undoubtedly the biggest health and care challenge facing the world today. Efforts to improve the lives of people with dementia around the world have taken a leap forward in recent years, particularly on beating the stigma and finding new treatments. With the dementia crisis snowballing, strong global leadership is essential.”