It starts with little things that you forget – false links in memory. Eventually the people affected no longer know who they are. Forgetting becomes a disease – a variety of dementia like Alzheimer’s disease, which appears in its most frequent form in people aged over 65. A steadily growing number of people are affected by incurable neurodegenerative diseases. Roughly one million people are affected by dementia in Germany alone, and 200,000 new incidents occur each year. Until now it has only been possible to slow down the development of these diseases with drugs.
The recently founded German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Bonn aims to advance research in this area. “Our centre will be unique in Europe – not only in terms of size, but also in terms of range of research approaches,” says founding director Professor Dr. Pierluigi Nicotera, who has previously investigated the mechanisms that damage nerve cells at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and at Konstanz University in Germany.
The idea for a scientific centre that would offer the opportunity to closely link pure research and practical applications for the first time was put forward in 2007, when the Federal Government decided to found the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases. In June 2008 everything was ready. At the opening, Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan said it offered the first comprehensive and systematic approach to researching diseases like Alzheimer’s.
The German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases, which belongs to the Helmholtz Association, will bring together established authorities in the field and cooperate closely with nearby hospitals, universities, Max Planck Institutes and industry. With an annual budget of some 66 million euros, it is the first institution in Europe where the entire range of research is networked and simultaneously transferred to therapeutic practice in a patient-centred way in order to improve the quality of life of those affected and their family members. Germany aims to play a pioneering role in this field in Europe. “We must also define standards at the European level when it comes to therapies and documenting the disease,” says Italian dementia researcher Nicotera. Accordingly, one of the DZNE’s first tasks involves creating a national register of neurodegenerative diseases to enable more precise monitoring of their frequency and development. Additionally, an information centre is to serve as a point of contact for family members caring for dementia patients and as an information source for general practitioners. A day hospital for people with dementia is also be established in Bonn. This will enable clinical research to gain important insights into the development of the disease, for example, through regular magnetic resonance imaging of the brain.
In all, seven German locations with different research emphases, including Göttingen, Munich and Dresden, belong to the Bonn-based centre. “This new approach enables us to mobilize the best specialists in and outside Germany and overcome the traditional divide between university and non-university research. We link the different partners into one large unit,” says Nicotera. The DZNE will also benefit from well-known scientific institutions in and around Bonn. These include the neurology, psychiatry and epileptology clinics at Bonn’s University Hospital, the Caesar Research Centre, the recently founded Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Age Research at Cologne University and the Jülich Research Centre.
Nowhere else is there a centre that wishes to conduct research for a common goal so intensively across national borders. Nicotera is attempting to attract staff to Bonn from all over the world and is meeting with great interest. Cooperation with other leading researchers in this field has an enormous attraction: “That’s how it works in Harvard and that’s how it should be here.”
What meaningful products can patients expect and when? There are many approaches to possible therapies for Alzheimer’s disease: traditional pharmaceutical drugs, stem cells, gene therapies, vaccination. However, it will take at least 10 to 15 years before basic therapies are ready for application. By 2040 neurodegenerative diseases will have become the second most common cause of death after cardiovascular diseases and ahead of cancer. The 53-year-old medical researcher Nicotera faces an enormous task, which is why he emphasizes that no time should be lost. “We want to stop dementia becoming a mass disease.”
