Our partners
Professor David Burn
Dementia Theme Lead and Pro-Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University
Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University
The NIHR Newcastle BRC represents a collaboration between the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Newcastle Hospitals) and Newcastle University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences (FMS).
Newcastle University’s activity aims to advance knowledge, provide creative solutions and solve global problems. It is a world class, research-intensive university that builds upon a broad disciplinary base to integrate education with research and engagement.
Medicine has been taught at Newcastle since 1834 and a lot of modern care techniques and technologies were developed here. Newcastle University also boasts a well-established expertise around ageing research, having invested in studies, staff and infrastructure to advance work in this area.
This expertise in ageing makes the NIHR Newcastle BRC ideally placed to be the only BRC in the country to focus on supporting first-in-to-man studies* in this field; accelerating discoveries to deliver improvements to diagnosis, treatments or interventions, and potentially cures, for age-related conditions.
*beyond work that may have only been tested on animals.
Ageing research at Newcastle University
- 1960s: scientists at Newcastle University identify the major brain biochemical deficit which causes Alzheimer’s disease, making the institution a world leader in ageing research and age-related illness
- 1994: Institute for the Health of the Elderly established – the first multidisciplinary centre to recognise the complexity of ageing research and its importance as a societal challenge
- 2004: first purpose-built ageing research building was constructed: the Henry Wellcome Laboratory for Biogerontology Research
- 2005: the University partnered with the Newcastle Hospitals establish Campus for Ageing and Vitality
- 2007: first NIHR Newcastle BRC established – went on to be successful in two successive funding competitions, meaning that a BRC focusing on ageing and long-term conditions has now been here for 12 years
- 2014: the University successfully bid to host National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA), bringing together academics, the NHS, public and private sector