UK launches world's first venture capital fund to combat dementia

The Dementia Discovery Fund is the world’s first venture capital fund for dementia research. A partnership between government, charity, pharmaceutical firms and a venture capital firm, it aims to provide funding for new ideas to tackle dementia by creating and investing in 40 businesses developing solutions and prepare three to five drugs for clinical trials by 2025. The scheme takes projects through a seven stage development process, with funds scaled up as they progress. DDF has raised $100m of the $200m it hopes to invest in dementia research. The difficulty of drug development has seen the field often overlooked; in 2015 dementia received a fifth of the funding allocated to cancer.