History

Four members of the public founded the Alzheimer's Research Trust in 1992 as a result of their deep concerns at the lack of funding for Alzheimer's research.

The charity originally planned to fulfil its goal by establishing a dedicated dementia research laboratory with Millennium and National Lottery funding. When this support failed to emerge, we reconsidered the best way to make progress in our fight against the disease and in 1997 decided to begin funding work directly in research institutions, enabling increased effectiveness and cross-pollination of ideas from a university or hospital environment. At the same time, we launched the Alzheimer's Research Trust Research Network to ensure our original multi-disciplinary vision of bringing scientists together was realised.

In 1998 the Alzheimer's Research Trust changed its charity number to 1077089 when it also became a company limited by guarantee. The first major grant of £500,000 was awarded in the same year to a team led by distinguished scientist Dr Michel Goedert in Cambridge. The charity now offers ten different types of research support and is funding over 100 grants all over the UK at a cost of more than £11 million.

Despite all of our advances, we remain deeply concerned at the relative lack of financial support for dementia research, particularly when compared with other diseases. We urgently need more funds to accelerate research and put an end to dementia once and for all.