Newmarket-based racehorse owner donates £5 million to Alzheimer’s Research UK
A Newmarket-based racehorse owner breeder, and philanthropist, is giving £5 million to Alzheimer’s Research UK to support five years of pioneering research.
The pledge, the largest ever received by the charity, has been made by Dr Kirsten Rausing through her Newmarket-based Alborada Trust which is named after her dual Champion Stakes-winning mare bred at her Lanwades Stud at Moulton.
“We are proud to support Alzheimer’s Research UK through The Alborada Drug Discovery Institute,and believe that this commitment will accelerate the development for new dementia treatments,” said trust secretary Jeremy Richardson.
“We realise that it is only through biomedical research that progress will made to help the millions of people worldwide affected by these devastating diseases.”
The pledge follows on from the trust’s previous support of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Stem Cell Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
On Friday, Dr Rausing and fellow trustees visited the institute where they met the scientists whose work will be supported by the donation.
Dr John Skidmore, the institute’s chief scientific officer, said: “With this fantastic commitment, our expert drug discovery team of biologists and chemists are able to continue searching for compounds to slow or stop the diseases causing dementia. We are uniquely placed to draw on the wealth of expertise that surrounds us at the University of Cambridge which will speed up the hunt for key proteins or biological processes that play a critical role in these diseases.”
Dr Skidmore’s team is under the guidance of lead academic scientist Prof David Rubinsztein, one of Cambridge University’s foremost dementia researchers. The institute works to seek out approaches previously unexplored by the pharmaceutical industry, to discover promising new drug targets against the diseases that cause dementia.
Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:“On behalf of the charity and everyone we are here to support, we’d like to express our huge gratitude to The Alborada Trust for showing such incredible commitment to the fight against dementia.”
