The 2020 CIHR Institute of Aging Fellowship Prize of Excellence in Research on Aging

Each year, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Aging (CIHR-IA) recognizes the highest ranked postdoctoral trainee in the field of aging from the CIHR open postdoctoral competition as the CIHR-IA Fellowship Prize of Excellence in Research on Aging recipient.

Recipient

Lindsay Wallace, University of Cambridge (UK)

Research Summary

As the world's population ages, the number of people living with dementia is quickly growing. Dementia inflicts an enormous burden on individuals, their families and caregivers, and our society. By 2050, over 131 million people globally will be living with dementia, costing more than US$818 billion. Following multiple failed drug trials for dementia, we urgently need to better understand how dementia develops in order to treat and prevent the disease. Interestingly, the brain abnormalities (pathology) that are thought to cause dementia are not related very well to the symptoms- that is some people have brain pathology but no dementia, and some people with dementia have very little brain pathology. Frailty has been associated with cognitive decline and dementia and they share many risk factors. My hypothesis is that frailty affects the level of brain pathology needed to produce the clinical symptoms of dementia. The objectives of the proposed study are to 1) test how frailty, brain pathology, and dementia are related in a collection of studies that accurately represent the population, 2) test the impact of reducing frailty on dementia risk by re-analyzing clinical trial data. This project is important because it has the potential to change our understanding of how dementia develops. By improving our understanding of dementia development we will be better able to target our research, clinical, and policy efforts towards finding effective prevention and treatment.

Date modified:

2023-01-09