Cath Mummery - CNS 2023

About CNS2023 The 33rd annual Cambridge Neuroscience Seminar took place on Tuesday September 26th 2023 at Robinson College at the University of Cambridge. We used our annual meeting to highlight the strength in the interdisciplinary approach to tackling dementia and how collaboration, with the communal aim of understanding these diseases and identifying new treatments, is key. Emerging therapies in dementia: a new era Abstract: The route to therapies in dementia has been a long and at times tortuous road, but we are now at a pivotal moment in dementia research and treatment: the beginning of disease modification and a new way of working. In the first part of the talk, I’ll chart how progress in AD translational research has led to more sophisticated trial design and execution, and an increase in complexity and range of targets and technologies being used. I’ll summarise the converging results across anti amyloid immunotherapies, then explore the proliferation of novel methods in early phase trials, in particular genetic therapies, focussing on recent results that show promise, and how collaborative work with industry can bring experimental medicine into the trials environment and enhance understanding of trial results. In the second part of the talk, I’ll discuss the challenges in our translational research space and of implementation of these new therapies, and how our systems need a major overhaul if we are to build on the UK’s translational research reputation and avoid the tragedy of having a drug but not being able to deliver it safely and equitably to patients. Biography: Cath Mummery is a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She is chair of the NIHR Dementia Translational Research Collaboration, building a national unified trials network for early phase clinical trials in dementia. She is Head of Clinical Trials at the Dementia Research Centre, Institute of Neurology, University College London, and Deputy Director for the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre, a cutting-edge research facility dedicated to the conduct of early phase trials in neurodegeneration. Over the past 16 years, she has been chief investigator on over 20 early phase drug trials of potential disease modifying agents in sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and genetic forms of AD and frontotemporal dementia, including immunotherapies against amyloid and tau, and novel mechanisms in first in human trials including checkpoint inhibitors, gene silencing and AAV genetic therapies. As clinical lead for the UCL Neurogenetic Therapies Programme, she has led a programme of innovative collaboration between industry and academia, developing novel biomarkers in a trial of a genetic therapy and introducing new methods to measure real time change in protein production/clearance in a gene silencing trial. Alongside her clinical work as Head of the cognitive service at NHNN, she was until recently the deputy chair of the NHSE Neuroscience Clinical Reference Group and chair of the Association of British Neurologists Services Committee, leading neurology service development and support in the UK. She is a member of the Alzheimer’s Research UK taskforce, dedicated to raising awareness of dementia and reducing barriers to early and accurate diagnosis, and access to potential treatments.