Eric Karran

More than 45 million people worldwide are estimated to have Alzheimer's disease (AD) or some type of dementia, and there are few therapeutics to help them. Although a handful of high-profile candidates are currently being tested in expensive large-scale clinical trials, the neurodegenerative space is particularly fraught with failure. As problematically, the early-stage pipeline for AD is running dry. So what happens if plan A fails again, as it has so many times in the past? Eric Karran, Director of Research at Alzheimer's Research UK, hopes that the newly launched UK£30-million Drug Discovery Alliance can shore up the community. The former head of neuroscience research at Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Pfizer tells Asher Mullard about Alzheimer's Research UK's plan to embed drug discovery teams directly into academic centres.