Features / #BristolCharityAdvent
Bristol Charity Advent Calendar 2018, day 11: BRACE
BRACE is a charity working across the South West region as well as southern Wales. They fund research into Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with the aim of finding better treatments, providing earlier diagnoses and striving to find an eventual cure.
The charity focusses on funding pilot projects in areas of research that often reside outside the policy guidelines of other funders. BRACE also covers the core costs for clinical and laboratory teams in Bristol, which helps to enable stability and further research development.
The charity’s early studies of dementia have formed some of the framework for drug development programmes today. They have also provided the opportunity for over 30 PhD students to develop their skills and become part of a new generation of researchers, and developed the Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale (BADLS), which is used worldwide as part of the process of diagnosing dementia.
is needed now More than ever
BRACE was founded in September of 1987 by a group of scientists, clinicians and volunteers, many of whom had experiences of relatives suffering from dementia. The charity primarily supported research at the University of Bristol until 2006, when it became a regional charity supporting research teams at the universities of Bath, Plymouth, Cardiff and more further education institutes.
BRACE has been based at the Bristol Brain Centre at Southmead Hospital since 2015, after donating £600,000 to enable the centre to be built. Though the team behind the charity is small, it is still delivering impressive results and helping progress the understanding and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Find out more about the charity by visiting www.alzheimers-brace.org
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